I.B.TAURIS FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE London Book Fair 2017
Contents Society, International Relations, Politics Kingdom of Women by Choo Waihong China’s Borderlands by Steven Parham Berlin Rules by Paul Lever Europe’s Relations with North Africa by Adam Fawaz Yousef Journalism and the NSA Revelations by Risto Kunelius, Heikki Heikkilä, Adrienne Russell and Dmitry Yagodin (Eds) Online Activism in the Middle East by Jon Nordenson The UAE by William Gueraiche Brexit, No Exit by Denis MacShane Dawn of a New Order by Rein Müllerson The New Sultan by Soner Cagaptay Destroying a Nation by Nikolaos Van Dam Chasing the Chinese Dream by Nick Holdstock Finding Eden by Robin Hanbury–Tenison Why Cold War Again? by Stephen F. Cohen Frontline Turkey by Ezgi Basaran
Backlist
History, Religion Battles for Freedom by Eric Foner Talleyrand in London by Linda Kelly British POWs and the Holocaust by Russell Wallis Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World by Charles Tieszen The Croatian Spring by Ante Batovic The First Mapping of America by Alex Johnson Kennedy and the Middle East by Antonio Perra Greek Civil War by Spyridon Plakoudas The Korean Diaspora in Post-War Japan by Myung Ja Kim You Win or You Die by Ayelet Haimson Lushkov A Forgotten Man by Geoffrey Elliott The Riviera at War by George G. Kundahl The Tsar’s Armenians by Onur Önol The Women Who Built the Ottoman World by Muzaffer Ozgules
Young Lothar by Larry Orbach and Vivien Orbach-Smith Dharma by Veena R. Howard Fighting Proud by Stephen Bourne A History of Stability and Change in Lebanon by Joseph Bayeh The Makers of Modern Syria by Sami Moubayed The Reporting of Genocide by David Patrick Stalin’s Maverick Spy by Hamish MacGibbon The Myth of Hero and Leander by Silvia Montiglio Religion in the Roman World by Juliette Harrisson Building Stalinism by Cynthia Ruder Corinth in Late Antiquity by Amelia Brown Inferno by Margaret Kean Iran and the West by Margaux Whiskin (Ed) Jane Austen’s England by Anne-Marie Edwards Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England by Francis Young The Special Operations Executive (SEO) in Burma by Richard Duckett The Old Believers in Imperial Russia by Peter De Simone Embracing the Darkness by John Callow
Backlist Series
Architecture, Art, Media, Culture Dressing for Austerity by Geraldine Biddle-Perry Rebuilding Babel by Mark Crinson The Dead City Paul Dobraszcyk Feminism and Art History Now by Victoria Horne, Laura Perry (Eds) The Jazz War by Will Studdert Craft on Demand by Anthea Black, Nicole Burisch (Eds) Death in the Desert by Howard Hughes Positive Images by Dion Kagan
Backlist Series
Society International Relations Politics
Kingdom of Women Life, Love and Death in China’s Mountains Choo Waihong Choo Waihong was a corporate lawyer with top law firms in Singapore and California before she took early retirement in 2006 and began writing travel pieces for publications such as China Daily. She lived for six years with the Mosuo tribe and now spends half the year with them in Yunnan, China.
February 2017
256 pages 30 illustrations Approx. 75,000 words World rights available => Society, China, History
The first and only book on the Mosuo tribe
A truly fascinating account of one of the world's last matrilineal societies
Written beautifully, highly promotable story
`A crisp account by a high powered Singaporean lawyer of how she renounced her former life of fifteen hour working days in a male dominated corporate world to find her feminist soul in the last matriarchal ethnic group remaining in China. Full of insights and touching descriptions, this is one of the most accessible and concrete descriptions of the Mosuo, a group more analysed than understood, putting the humanity of this tribe at the forefront of their identity.' - Kerry Brown, author of CEO China and The New Emperors In a mist-shrouded valley on China's invisible border with Tibet is a place known as the 'Kingdom of Women', where a small tribe called the Mosuo lives in a cluster of villages that have changed little in centuries. This is one of the last matrilineal societies on earth, where power lies in the hands of women. All decisions and rights related to money, property, land and the children born to them rest with the Mosuo women, who live completely independently of husbands, fathers and brothers, with the grandmother as the head of each family. A unique practice is also enshrined in Mosuo tradition - that of 'walking marriage', where women choose their own lovers from men within the tribe but are beholden to none. Choo Waihong is the only non-Mosuo to have ever lived with the tribe. She tells the remarkable story of her time in the remote mountains of China and gives a vibrant, compelling glimpse into a way of life that teeters on the knife-edge of extinction.
China’s Borderlands The Faultline of Central Asia Steven Parham
Steven Parham spent a year travelling through the borderlands of Central Asia and recording what he saw. He is Associate Researcher in Ethnography at the University of Bern and a Post-Doctoral Researcher on Central Asia at the University of Tampere in Finland. He has lectured around the world, including at universities in Turkey and in Budapest.
February 2017
304 pages 2 maps Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => Politics, China, Russia
Appeal to Russia, China and Central Asia markets
Economics of these bordelands increasingly important in the study of Modern China
Ground-Breaking Research
‘Illuminating… Holdstock
an
invaluable
insight’
-
Nick
As China begins its momentous New Silk Road project and expands its influence into Central Asia, the borderlands between China, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have become sites of ethnic tension and political struggle. This region – which marks the meeting of China and post-Soviet Central Asia – is increasingly important militarily, economically and geographically. Yet we know little of the people that live there, beyond a romanticised ‘Silk Road’ sense of fraternity. As Steven Parham shows, many of the world’s Soviet borders have proved to be deeply unstable and, in the end, impermanent. Meanwhile, the looming presence of Modern China and Russia, who are funnelling money and military resources into the region – partly to fight what they see as a growing Islamic activism – are adding fuel to the fire. This lyrical, intelligent book functions as part travelogue, part sociological exploration, and is based on a unique body of research – five months trekking through the checkpoints of the border regions. As China continues to grow and become more assertive, as it has been recently in Africa and in the South China Seas – as well as in Xinjiang – China’s borderlands have become a battleground between the Soviet past and the Chinese future.
Berlin Rules Europe and the German Way Paul Lever Sir Paul Lever KCMG is a retired former British ambassador. Over the course of a long diplomatic career, his posts included assistant UnderSecretary at the FCO 1992–94; chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee 1994–96; Director for EU and Economic Affairs at the FCO 1996–97; and Ambassador to Germany 1997–2003. After his retirement from the diplomatic service, he was Chairman of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Lever was appointed CMG in 1991 and knighted KCMG in 1998.
March 2017
288 pages Approx. 90,000 words World rights available => Current Affairs, Politics, European Studies
New perspective on post-Brexit future of Europe
Strong interest in Europe in the aftermath of the EU referendum
Important perspective into debates on the future of Europe
New insights into Germany’s role as the dominant player in Europe. In the second half of the twentieth century, Germany became the dominant political and economic power in Europe – and in the EU. Yet Germany’s leadership of the EU is geared principally to the defence of German national interests. Germany exercises power in order to protect the German economy and to enable it to play an influential role in the wider world. Beyond that there is no underlying vision or purpose. In this book, former British ambassador to Germany Paul Lever provides a unique insight into modern Germany. He shows how Germany’s history has influenced its current economic and social development and provides important perspectives on Germany’s future political and cultural growth, especially in the context of the 2015 refugee crisis which saw over 1 million refugees offered a home in Germany. As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, this book will be essential reading and suggests the future shape of a Germanydominated Europe.
Europe’s Relations with North Africa Politics, Economics and Security Adam Fawaz Yousef Adam Fawaz Yousef is a political economist who specialises in the economics of the European Union, political economy and economic development. He has acted as an economic advisor to a variety of governmental and nongovernmental organisations in Europe and North America.
March 2017 320 pages Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => International Relations, Politics, Economics
Socio-economic perspective on European relations with North Africa
New perspective on EU’s Barcelona Process
Identifies successes and failures of EU policy towards Morocco
New framework for understanding European relations with North Africa. The rapid evolution of events in the European, Middle Eastern, and North African spheres has reinvigorated the debate on Euro-Mediterranean relations. Since 1995 these relations have operated under the auspices of the Barcelona Process, which laid the foundations for three initiatives that define European policy towards neighbouring states: the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy, and the Union for the Mediterranean This book scrutinises these initiatives through a socioeconomic prism. Adam Yousef reviews how appropriate these initiatives have been in promoting socioeconomic development in North African states, projects the long-term implications of these policies and investigates whether they can reduce the gap in social outcomes across the Mediterranean Basin over time. Using Morocco as a case study, this book employs a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative data as well as economic theory. It reveals not only that the Barcelona Process has had a limited impact on promoting social outcomes in Morocco, but crucially that it is also unlikely to do so in the future, suggesting a new approach may be required.
Journalism and the NSA Revelations Privacy, Security and the Press Risto Kunelius, Heikki Heikkilä, Adrienne Russell and Dmitry Yagodin (Eds)
March 2017
Risto Kunelius is Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampere; Heikki Heikkilä is Senior Research Fellow at Research Center for Journalism, Media and Communication (COMET) at the University of Tampere; Adrienne Russell is Associate Professor in the Emergent Digital Practices program and co-director of the Institute for Digital Humanities at the University of Denver; Dmitry Yagodin is Researcher in the Research Center for Journalism, Media and Communication (COMET) at the University of Tampere.
288 pages 6 b&w illustrations Approx. 90,000 words World rights available => Journalism, International Relations
New perspectives from a range of countries
Transnational approach to questions of journalism and security
A rich and thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and limits of ‘transnational journalism’ at a crucial time of political and digital change.
A scholarly analysis of the impact of Snowden’s NSA revelations on media and journalism. Edward Snowden’s revelations about the mass surveillance capabilities of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other security services triggered an ongoing debate about the relationship between privacy and security in the digital world. This discussion has been dispersed into a number of national platforms, reflecting local political realities but also raising questions that cut across national public spheres. What does this debate tell us about the role of journalism in making sense of global events? This book looks at discussions of these debates in the mainstream media in the USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China. The chapters focus on editorials, commentaries and op-eds and look at how opinion-based journalism has negotiated key questions on the legitimacy of surveillance and its implications to security and privacy. Journalism and the NSA Revelations provides a rich and thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and limits of ‘transnational journalism’ at a time when its definition, functions and raison d’etre appear ambiguous.
Online Activism in the Middle East Political Power and Authoritarian Governments from Egypt to Kuwait Jon Nordenson Jon Nordenson is based at the University of Oslo. He has published in The Middle East Journal and Babylon - Nordic Journal for the Middle East and North Africa, for which he won the Babylon Award for best contribution by a young researcher. He is Board Member for The Nordic Society for Middle East Studies.
March 2017
336 pages Approx. 134,000 words World rights available => Society, Middle East, Politics
Reveals the connections between online activism and offline mobilization
Based on ethnographic research methods
Kuwait is an often neglected country in ME studies
Examines the role of online platforms for affecting political and social change in Egypt in Kuwait. Does the internet facilitate social and political change, or even democratization, in the Middle East? Despite existing research on this subject, there is still no consensus on the importance of social media and online platforms, or on how we are to understand their influence. This book provides empirical analysis of the day-to-day use of online platforms by activists in Egypt and Kuwait. Since the mid-2000s, they have been the most prominent Arab countries in terms of online and offline activism. In the context of Kuwait, Jon Nordenson examines the oppositional youth groups who fought for a constitutional, democratic monarchy in the emirate. In Egypt, focus surrounds the groups and organizations working against sexual violence and sexual harassment. Online Activism in the Middle East shows how and why online platforms are used by activists and identifies the crucial features of successful online campaigns. Egypt and Kuwait are revealed to be authoritarian contexts but where the challenges and possibilities faced by activists are quite different.
The UAE Geopolitics, Modernity and Tradition William Gueraiche William Gueraiche is Associate Professor, American University in the Emirates (Dubai). He has been Associate Professor of Social Sciences, American University in Dubai (UAE), Lecturer in Geopolitics, University Marne La Vallee (Paris), and Lecturer in History at the University of the Sorbonne. His research focuses upon the UAE and Gulf societies, Middle Eastern security, and diplomacy in the Gulf.
March 2017
288 pages 12 b&w illustrations Approx. 105,000 words World rights available => Political Geography, Middle East, International Relations
A fresh perspective that goes beyond the usual polarisation of denigrating the country or commending it unreservedly
Provides deep insights into the economic and political trends in the UAE
A compelling account of branding of the Dubai.
The seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates were little known until the spectacular success of Dubai. The branding of the city not only brought Emiratis one of the highest standards of living in the world, it also spread positive representations of the UAE to the world at large, in striking contrast to more familiar representations of the Middle East. The UAE: Geopolitics, Modernity and Tradition is the first scholarly study of the UAE’s campaign to establish itself on the international stage. The author also explores the impact the resulting economic transformation has had on the country. Emirati society remains at core conservative and the preservation of Arab-Islamic identity remains important, yet the UAE has the highest proportion of foreigners of any country in the world. What does this mean for the identity of Emiratis living there? And what are the implications for foreigners working there? With additional analysis on the environmental cost of the Dubai lifestyle - manifest in the world’s highest electricity and water consumption per capita - its ‘Look East’ policy and increasing volume of trade with eastern Asia, its challenge to the traditional hegemony of Saudi Arabia in the region, and the impact of the subsequent economic depression, the book will be welcomed by all with an interest in the UAE, modernity and the wider Middle East.
Brexit, No Exit Why Britain Won’t Leave Europe Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane was a Labour MP serving in Tony Blair’s government as Minister for Europe. He was first elected as MP for Rotherham in 1994 and served until his resignation in 2012. He is a prominent commentator on European issues and is the author of Brexit: Why Britain Left Europe.
June 2017 256 pages 7 b&w illustrations Approx. 88,000 words World rights available => Politics, Current Affairs
Highly topical subject area
Extensive events and press programme planned
Important perspective on future of EU
Former Europe Minister spells out the future of Britain’s relationship with Europe. The UK’s Brexit vote on 23rd June 2016 provided perhaps the most dramatic proof that the era of political and economic globalization has ended. Populism, nationalism and xenophobia are surging across Europe and Brexit adds to the problems facing the established political order. This book shows how we reached this stage and what needs to be done now. As a former MP and Europe minister under Tony Blair, and latterly as a commentator and writer on European issues, Denis MacShane has a unique insider perspective on the events that led to Brexit and the behind-the-scenes discussions that followed. He argues that Brexit will not mean full rupture with Europe and that British capitalism will overcome the ultra-right-wing forces of the Conservative back-bench and UKIP. Although the path to Article 50 and beyond will be fraught and tensely-negotiated, Britain cannot and will not divorce itself from the continent of Europe and the European question will continue to be a defining feature of politics into the future.
Dawn of a New Order Geopolitics and the Clash of Ideologies Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson is Research Professor at the University of Tallinn. He was formerly Professor of International Law at King's College London, UN Regional Advisor for Central Asia and a Visiting Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the author of 12 books on international law and politics.
June 2017 240 pages 12 b&w illustrations, 1 map Approx. 75,000 words Rights sold: EE => International Relations, Geopolitics, Economics
Ground-breaking book on international politics and international law
Outlines the challenges of the new world order
Highly relevant reading in relation to current affairs
Major statement on geopolitics and the new world order in the 21st century. The most significant development in global politics following the end of the bi-polar Cold War era has been the rise of a multi-polar state system. This has led to the emergence of major potential superpowers, global rivalry, international terrorism and the gradual weakening of the one remaining hegemonic, uni-polar state after the Cold War - the US. The idealistic hopes following the collapse of communism have evaporated and Cold War competition between liberal capitalism and communism has been replaced by multi-polar global rivalry that can only be resolved by a balance of power buttressed by international law. In this ambitious and thought-provoking book, Professor Rein Müllerson outlines the challenges associated with the new geopolitics of the twenty-first century. Based on in-depth research over several decades it is an essential tool for understanding the new world order and the ensuing crises in global politics.
The New Sultan Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey Soner Cagaptay Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute. He has written extensively on U.S.-Turkish relations, Turkish domestic politics and Turkish nationalism, publishing in scholarly journals and major international print media, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic, New Republic, and Newsweek Türkiye.
June 2017 224 pages 2 maps Approx. 70,000 words World rights available => International Relations, Politics, Turkey
New insight into the roots of the Middle Eastern conflict – Turkey is on the frontline.
Author an internationally known specialist on Turkey with extensive media experience and multiple platforms for promotion
The must-have story of Erdogan’s rise, rule and beliefs. The aborted coup in Turkey has fired up interest in a country which will play a critical geopolitical role in the wars of the Middle East. The spotlight will inevitably be on Erdogan – the powerful leader of the country - whose increasingly bizarre and authoritarian regime has increased tensions enormously both within and outside the country. His crackdown has been brutal and consistent – thousands of journalists arrested, academics officially banned from leaving the country, university deans fired and three quarters of highest ranking army officers arrested. In some senses, this coup has given Erdogan the license to make good on his repeated promise to bring order and stability under a ‘strongman’. Here, leading Turkish expert Soner Cagaptay will look at where Erdogan comes from in Turkish history, what he believes in, how he has cemented his rule will assess the threats he faces – from the liberal youth to the Gülen movement, the army plotters and the Kurdish question.
Destroying a Nation The Civil War in Syria Nikolaos Van Dam
Nikolaos van Dam is a specialist on Syria who served as Special Envoy of the Netherlands for Syria in 2015-2016. He has previously served as Ambassador of the Netherlands to Indonesia, Germany, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq.
July 2017 224 pages 9 tables & 2 maps Approx. 65,000 words World rights available => Middle East, Politics, Current Affairs, History
New book from author of acclaimed Struggle for Power in Syria
Author was witness to events on the ground as Special Envoy to Syria
Ground-breaking account of Syria’s descent to Chaos. Following the Arab Spring, Syria descended into civil and sectarian conflict. It has since become a fractured warzone which operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements including ISIS as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. In this book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria Nikolaos van Dam explains the recent history of Syria, covering the growing disenchantment with the Assad regime, the chaos of civil war and the fractures which led to the rise and expansion of ISIS. Through an in-depth examination of the role of sectarian, regional and tribal loyalties in Syria, van Dam traces political developments within the Assad regime and the military and civilian power elite from the Arab Spring to the present day.
Chasing the Chinese Dream Stories from Modern China Nick Holdstock
Nick Holdstock is a journalist and writer. His writing can be found in Vice, The LA Review of Books, n+1, The Independent, The Dublin Review, Times Literary Supplement, the Edinburgh Review, Dissent and Salon.com amongst others. He is the author of China’s Forgotten People, a biography of Xinjiang. He writes regularly on China for the London Review of Books.
September 2017 256 pages 10 b&w integrated Approx. 85,000 words World rights available => Society, China, Current Affairs
A spellbinding narrative of Chinese hope and dreams
The author has lived a worked in China
Should support a big publicity campaign
A spell-binding and magical narrative that tells the story of modern China through the people who are living it. China is undergoing the biggest and fastest societal and economic change in human history. Driving this dizzying transformation is the idea of the ‘Chinese Dream’, the promise that in the new China, anyone can make it. Journalist and writer Nick Holdstock has travelled the length of this huge country in order to find out the reality behind this rhetoric – from the factory-owner, to the noodle seller, from the karaoke maids to the hoteliers, and from the deserted, ageing countryside to the young and overcrowded cities. Chasing the Chinese Dream follows a cast of extraordinary characters: we meet the people getting rich; running factories and buying luxury cars and Louis Vuitton bags. But we also meet those left behind, trapped by a system which forces long hours and no prospects upon them.
Finding Eden A Journey into the Heart of Borneo Robin Hanbury–Tenison
September 2017 288 pages 50 b&w & 8pp colour illustrations Approx. 75,000 words World rights available => Travel & Exploration, Environment, Society
Robin Hanbury Tenison is the doyen of British explorers, a household name and bestselling author
Extraordinary account of the expedition that started the Rainforest Movement
Highly topical issues (survival of indigenous people, environment) and will receive attention & support from RGS, Survival International, etc
Robin Hanbury-Tenison, OBE, DL, is the doyen of British explorers. A Founder and President of Survival International, the world’s leading organisation supporting tribal peoples, he was one of the first people to bring the plight of the rainforests to the world's attention. He has been a Gold Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society, winner of the Pio Manzu Award, an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, Winston Churchill Memorial Fellow, Trustee of the Ecological Foundation and Fellow of the Linnean Society. He is the author of A Question of Survival for the Indians of Brazil, Mysterious China, The Great Explorers and his two autobiographies, World’s Apart: An Explorer’s Life and Worlds Within: Reflections in the Sand. “Sometimes it feels as though the whole planet has been so polluted and ravaged that there are no Edens left, but they are there to be found by those who step off the beaten track… So it was with mine.” Fifty years ago the interior of Borneo was a pristine, virgin rainforest inhabited by uncontacted indigenous tribes and naïve, virtually tame, wildlife. It was into this ‘Garden of Eden’ that Robin Hanbury Tenison led one of the largest ever Royal Geographical Society expeditions, an extraordinary undertaking which triggered the global rainforest movement and illuminated, for the first time, how vital rainforests are to our planet. For 15 months, Hanbury Tenison and a team of some of the greatest scientists in the world immersed themselves in a place and a way of life that is on the cusp of extinction. Much of what was once a wildlife paradise is now a monocultural desert, devastated by logging and the forced settlement of nomadic tribes, where traditional ways of life and unimaginably rich and diverse species are slowly being driven to extinction. This is a story for our time, one that reminds us of the fragility of our planet and of the urgent need to preserve the last untamed places of the world.
Why Cold War Again? How America Lost Post-Soviet Russia Stephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a leading scholar of Russia, media commentator and author of several widely acclaimed books. He is Professor of Russian Studies and History at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Politics at Princeton. His books include Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of PostCommunist Russia, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin (I.B.Tauris).
September 2017 224 pages Approx. 50,000 words World rights available => International Relations, History
Provides deep insights into the economic and political trends in UAE
Compelling account of the branding of Dubai
Valuable case study of nationbuilding in the post-colonial era
Essential account of the new East-West crisis from renown Russia analyst Stephen F. Cohen. The new East-West conflict, which broke out over the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, but which long predated it and soon spread through Europe and to the Middle East, is potentially the worst US-Russian confrontation in more than fifty years — and the most fateful. A negotiated resolution is possible, but time may be running out. In this book, renowned Russia scholar and media commentator Stephen F. Cohen traces the history of this EastWest relationship in the ‘Inter Cold War’ period — the years from the purported end of the preceding Cold War, in 1990-1991, to what he has long argued would be a new and even more dangerous Cold War. Cohen’s historical and contemporary analysis is insightful, thought-provoking and essential reading for anyone seeking to understand relations between the West and post-Soviet Russia.
Frontline Turkey The Conflict at the Heart of the Middle Est Ezgi Basaran
November 2017 256 pages 10 b&w integrated Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => Current Affairs, Turkey
Author is an internationally known specialist on Turkey with extensive media experience and multiple platforms for promotion
Ezgi Basaran is a Turkish journalist who made her name covering the Kurdish conflict - reporting ‘on the ground’ in the fight between ISIS, the YPG, the PKK and the Turkish state. She became the youngest ever editor of Turkey’s Radikal, the biggest centre-left news outlet in Turkey, and the first woman to hold the role. After facing government censorship when covering the breakdown of the Kurdish talks, she resigned. She has nearly 1 million twitter followers, and extensive ‘name-recognition’ in the field of Turkish politics and journalism.
A new insight into the roots of the Middle Eastern conflict. Turkey is on the front line of the war which is consuming Syria and the Middle East. Its role is complicated by the long-running conflict with the Kurds on their Syrian border – a war that has killed as many as 80,000 people over the last three decades. In 2011 Erdogan promised to make a deal with the Kurdistan military wing, but the talks marked a descent into assassinations, suicide bombings and the killing of civilians on both sides. The Kurdish peace process finally collapsed in 2014 with the spill-over of the Syrian Civil War. With ISIS moving through northern Iraq, Turkey has declared war on western allies such as the Kurdish YPG – the military who rescued the Yezidis and fought with US backing in Kobane. Frontline Turkey shows how the Kurds’ relationship with Turkey is at the very heart of the Middle Eastern crisis, and documents, through front-line reporting, how Erdogan’s failure to bring peace is the key to understanding current events in Middle East
Twenty-First Century Jihad How to Prevent War Elisabeth Kendall, Ewan Stein
304 pages 8 b&w illustrations approx. 115,000 words => International Relations Rights available: World
Elisabeth Kendall is Senior Research Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Oxford University. She is the author of Literature, Journalism and the AvantGarde: Intersection in Egypt. Ewan Stein is Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Representing Israel in Modern Egypt: Ideas, Intellectuals and Foreign Policy from Nasser to Mubarak (I.B.Tauris).
The term 'jihad' has come to be used as a byword for fanaticism and Islam's allegedly implacable hostility towards the West. But, like other religious and political concepts, jihad has multiple resonances and associations, its meaning shifting over time and from place to place. Jihad has referred to movements of internal reform, spiritual struggle and self-defence as much as to 'holy war'. And among Muslim intellectuals, the meaning and significance of jihad remain subject to debate and controversy. With this in mind, Twenty-First Century Jihad examines the ways in which the concept of jihad has changed, from its roots in the Qur'an to its usage in current debate. This book explores familiar modern political angles, and touches on far less commonly analysed instances of jihad, incorporating issues of law, society, literature and military action. As this key concept is ever-more important for international politics and security studies, TwentyFirst Century Jihad contains vital analysis for those researching the role of religion in the modern world .
Irregular War ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins Paul Rogers
224 pages 2 maps approx. 80,000 words => Politics, Middle East Rights available: World
Paul Rogers is a leading expert in the field of international security, arms control and political violence with over 30 years’ experience. Rogers is a regular commentator on global security issues in both national and international media, and is International Security Editor for Open Democracy. He is the author of Why We’re Losing the War on Terror, and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century.
If the rise of Islamic State can overthrow powerful states in a matter of weeks, what kind of a secure future can the world expect? After more than a decade of the war on terror, security specialists thought that Islamist paramilitary movements were in decline; the threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Qaida in Yemen, the chaos in Libya and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan have all shown that to be wishful thinking. Once again the West is at war in the Middle East. Paul Rogers, the distinguished global security specialist, provides a much-needed look at the rise of such global terrorist movements from the margins and presents a new argument as troubling as it is compelling. While Islamic State has taken root in the Middle East and North Africa and has increasing impact across the world as thousands of young men and women rally to its cause, Rogers argues that it should be seen not just as a threat in its own right but as a marker of a much more dangerous world riddled with irregular war.
The Fog of Peace How to Prevent War Gabrielle Rifkind, Giandomenico Pico
304 pages 8 b&w illustrations approx. 80,000 words => International Relations Rights available: World
Gabrielle Rifkind is the Director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group. She is a group analyst and specialist in conflict resolution immersed in the politics of the Middle East. Giandomenico Picco worked for the UN for over 20 years and served as a UN negotiator on conflicts, focusing on Iran Iraq and Afghanistan.
Institutions do not decide whom to destroy or to kill, whether to make peace or war; those decisions are the responsibility of individuals. This book argues that the most important aspect of conflict resolution is for antagonists to understand their opponents, their ambitions, their pains. Developing links between psychology and politics, the authors ask: should we talk to the enemy? What happens if the protagonists are nasty and brutish, tempting policy-makers to retaliate? How do nations find the capacity not to hit back, trapping themselves in endless cycles of violence? Presenting a unique combination of psychological theories, geopolitical realities and first-hand peace-making experience, this book sheds new light on some of the worst conflicts in the modern world and demonstrates, above all, how empathy can often be far more persuasive than the most fearsome weapons.
Unmasked Corruption in the West Laurence Cockroft, Anne-Christine Wegener
288 pages 12 b&w illustrations approx. 80,000 words => Current Affairs, Politics, Business, Crime Rights available: World
Laurence Cockcroft is a Development Economist and Founder of Transparency International, the global civil society organization against corruption. Anne-Christine Wegener is an anticorruption consultant. She was previously a Deputy Director and Programme Manager at Transparency International UK.
How corrupt is the West? Europe and North America’s formal self-perception is one of high standards in public life. And yet, corruption is receiving ever greater attention in the European, American and Canadian press, with high-profile cases affecting both the corporate and political worlds. This book identifies the driving forces behind such cases, particularly the role of political finance, lobbying, the banking system and organised crime. It analyses the sectors which are particularly prone to corruption, including sport, defence and pharmaceuticals. In the course of their investigation, the authors consider why anti-corruption legislation has not been more effective and why there is an increasing discrepancy between regulation and commercial and cultural practice. Are Europe and the US genuinely serious about fighting corruption and if so what measures will be taken to roll it back?
Blinded by Humanity Inside the UN’s Humanitarian Operations Martin Barber
272 pages approx. 93,000 words => International Relations, Humanitarian Rights available: World
Martin Barber was a senior UN official and has extensive experience in humanitarian affairs and peace operations – both at UN Headquarters and in the field. He served as Director of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) at UN Headquarters in New York from 2000 until his retirement from the UN in 2005. He is now a consultant and analyst working on humanitarian issues.
How to respond effectively to humanitarian crises is one of the most pressing and seemingly intractable problems facing the United Nations. Martin Barber argues that the explanation for UN 'failures' or only partial successes lies not with any lack of idealism or good intentions but with the constraints placed on aid workers by ill-considered policies and poor practical application - officials are 'blinded by humanity'. Barber presents an inside story based on personal/hands-on/practical experience in Laos, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and, finally, in Abu Dhabi where he advised the UAE government on its aid programme. He tells of internal struggles at head office and the challenges of working in the field. All the major UN activities and headaches - are here, including refugee work, coordinating humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, the huge problem of 'demining', and the complex internal workings of the UN Secretariat. A personal narrative and lessons drawn from direct experience provide the frame for an examination of major questions concerning the future of humanitarian response.
Journalism in an Age of Terror Covering and Uncovering the Secret State John Lloyd
288 pages 2 maps approx. 80,000 words => International Relations, Jounalism Rights available: World
John Lloyd is a Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, a contributing editor at the Financial Times, and a columnist for both Reuters.com and La Repubblica of Rome.
The threat of terrorism and the increasing power of terrorist groups has prompted a rapid growth of the security services and changes in legislation, permitting the collection of communications data. This provides journalism with acute dilemmas. The media claims responsibility for holding power to account, yet cannot know more than superficial details about the newly empowered secret services. This book is the first to analyze, in the aftermath of the Snowden/NSA revelations, relations between two key institutions in the modern state: the intelligence services and the news media. It provides the answers to crucial questions including: how can power be held to account if one of the greatest state powers is secret? How far have the Snowden/NSA revelations damaged the activities of the secret services? And have governments lost all trust from journalists and the public?
Human Rights in Russia Citizens and the State from Perestroika to Putin Mary McAuley 320 pages 21 b&w illustrations approx. 122,000 words => Human Rights, Current Affairs, Russian Studies Rights available: World
Mary McAuley is an Associate of the International Centre for Prison Studies and a member of the International Advisory Committee for the website Rights in Russia. She is the author of Children in Custody: Anglo-Russian Perspectives; Russia's Politics of Uncertainty and Soviet Politics 1917-1991.
Today Russia and human rights are both high on the international agenda. Since Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, domestic developments - from the prosecution of Pussy Riot to the release of Khodorkovsky - and Russia’s global role, especially in relation to Ukraine, have captured the attention of the world. The role of human rights activism inside Russia is, therefore, coming under ever greater international scrutiny. Since 1991, when the Russian Federation became an independent state, hundreds of organisations have been created to champion human rights causes, with varying strategies, and successes. The response of the authorities has ranged from being supportive, or indifferent, to openly hostile. Based on archival research and practical experience working in the community, Mark McAuley here provides a clear and comprehensive analysis of the progress made by human rights organisations in Russia - and the challenges which will confront them in the future.
Frontline Ukraine Crisis in the Borderlands Richard Sakwa
356 pages 12 b&w illustrations, 6 maps approx. 144,000 words => International Relations, Politics, History, Eastern Europe Rights sold: DE, FI, HU, SE, RU
Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His main research interests are Russian domestic and international politics, European international relations and comparative democratization.
The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War. As Russia and Ukraine tussle for Crimea and the eastern regions, relations between Putin and the West have reached an all-time low. How did we get here? Richard Sakwa here unpicks the context of conflicted Ukrainian identity and of Russo-Ukrainian relations and traces the path to the recent disturbances through the events which have force Ukraine, a country internally divided between East and West, to choose between closer union with Europe or its historic ties with Russia. In providing the first full account of the crisis, Sakwa analyses the origins and significance of the Euromaidan Protests, examines the controversial Russian military intervention and annexation of Crimea, reveals the extent of the catastrophe of the MH17 disaster and looks at possible ways forward following the October 2014 parliamentary elections. In doing so, he explains the origins, developments and global significance of the internal and external battle of Ukraine.
Little Emperors and Material Girls Sex and Youth in Modern China Jemimah Steinfeld
256 pages xx illustrations approx. 70,000 words => Society, China Rghts available: World
Jemimah Steinfeld is a journalist who has worked and lived in China. She worked for the Global Times in Beijing, alongside writing freelance articles for CNN, Time Out and the Huffington Post. She currently works at London’s Asia House in charge of their literature programme and is Contributing Editor (China) for Index on Censorship magazine.
China is the world's fastest-growing economic powerhouse. Everybody knows this. But behind the headlines a once-in-ageneration sexual and cultural revolution is taking place - all in the bars, cafes and streets of China's growing mega-cities. Welcome to this new China. Writer and journalist Jemimah Steinfeld meets the young people behind the world's fastestmoving nation to unveil their attitudes towards love, life and sexuality. Young Chinese have new words to describe the world they live in: 'little emperors' - single men who have grown up under the one child policy - they're bossy and selfish; 'bare branches' - those without children; 'leftovers' - women over twenty-six who aren't married; 'comrade' - how the gay community identifies itself; 'love markets' - weekend gatherings across China where parents attempt to find husbands and wives for their children, and others show up to match-make young singles and even offer boyfriends for hire. Jemimah Steinfeld introduces the people at the heart of this world. Little Emperors and Material Girls is the book which will change the way you see China.
China’s Forgotten People Xinjiang, Terror and the Chinese State Nick Holdstock
288 pages 2 maps approx. 80,000 words => Society, China Rights available: World
Nick Holdstock is a journalist and writer. He has written on Xinjiang for the London Review of Books and his writing can also be found in Vice, the LA Review of Books, n+1, the Independent, the Dublin Review, the Edinburgh Review, Dissent and Salon.com amongst others.
On 28 October 2013 a jeep ploughed through a busy crowd before exploding in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. The Chinese authorities identified the driver as a Uyghur – one of an Islamic ethnic minority, 10 million strong, who live in China’s north-west province of Xinjiang. Six months later, eight knife-wielding Uyghurs went on a rampage at a train station in Kunming, killing 29 people and wounding more than 140 others. These attacks, described as “China’s 9/11”, have shaken the Chinese leadership, which has cracked down hard on Xinjiang and its Uyghurs. One of the few Western commentators to have lived in the region, journalist Nick Holdstock travels into the heart of the province and reveals the Uyghur story as one of repression, hardship and helplessness in the face of a powerful and intolerant one party Chinese state. As a result, China’s Islamic population is reacting to its own demonization, with Islamic terrorism in China no doubt set to increase over the next decade. How the Party responds will have global repercussions.
Under the Shadow Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey Kaya Genç
240 pages approx. 75,000 words => Politics, Revolution, History Rights available: World
Kaya Genc is a novelist and essayist and is the Istanbul correspondent of The Believer and The LA Review of Books as well as a contributing editor at Index on Censorship. His article for The LA Review of Books Surviving the Black Sea was selected as one of best non-fiction pieces of 2014 by The Atlantic.
Turkey stands at the crossroads of the Middle East―caught between the West and ISIS, Syria and Russia, and governed by an increasingly forceful leader. Acclaimed writer Kaya Genç has been covering his country for the past decade. In Under the Shadow he meets activists from both sides of Turkey's political divide: Gezi park protestors who fought tear gas and batons to transform their country's future, and supporters of Erdoğan's conservative vision who are no less passionate in their activism. While talking to Turkey's angry young people Genç weaves in historical stories, visions and mythologies, showing how Turkey's progressives and conservatives take their ideological roots from two political movements born in the Ottoman Empire: the Young Turks and the Young Ottomans, two groups of intellectuals who were united in their determination to make their country more democratic. He shows a divided society coming to terms with the 21st Century, and in doing so, gets to the heart of the compelling conflicts between history and modernity in the Middle East.
Generation M Young Muslims Changing the World Shelina Janmohamed
352 pages 10 b&w illustrations approx. 80,000 words => Islamic, Gender & Business Studies Rights sold: ID, TR
Shelina Janmohamed is the bestselling author of Love in a Headscarf. She is an established commentator on Muslim social and religious trends, and has written for the Guardian, the National and the BBC.
What does it mean to be young and Muslim today? There is a segment of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims that is more influential than any other, and will shape not just the future generations of Muslims, but also the world around them: meet ‘Generation M’. Tech-savvy and self-empowered, Generation M believe their identity encompasses both faith and modernity. Shelina Janmohamed, award-winning author and leading voice on Muslim youth, investigates this growing cultural phenomenon, at a time where understanding the mindset of young Muslims, and what drives them, is critical. Exploring fashion magazines, social networking and everyday consumer choices, Generation M shows how this dynamic section of our society is not only adapting to Western consumerism, but reclaiming it as its own. From the ‘Mipsters’ to the ‘Haloodies’, Halal internet dating to Muslim boy bands, Generation M are making their mark. It’s time to get hijabilicious!
Seeking Asylum in Israel Refugees and the History of Migration Law Gilad Ben-Nun
320 pages approx. 110,000 words => Middle East, Migration Studies Rights available: World
Gilad Ben-Nun is Marie Curie Individual Fellow at the University of Verona’s Department of Public International Law and holds a PhD from the University of Leipzig. He is also the author of The Fourth Geneva Convention: The History of International Humanitarian Law (I.B.Tauris).
Since 2005, approximately 70,000 asylum-seeking refugees from Sudan and Eritrea have entered Israel. This, along with the highly publicised anti-African immigrant riots in Israel in 2012 and 2014 and the current global refugee crisis, has meant that the issue of African migration has become increasingly controversial. Here Gilad Ben-Nun looks at this phenomenon in its historical and contemporary contexts, and compares it to the wider debates surrounding the Palestinian refugees in the region and the concept of their right of return. He argues that this newer, African migration issue has forced Israel to move from conceiving of itself as an ‘exceptional’ state and now has to view itself as a more ‘normal’ and ‘universal’ entity. Ranging as far back as Israel’s important role in the ratification drafting of the 1951 Refugee Convention and drawing on a variety of methodologies and sources, Ben-Nun offers a wide-ranging legal, social and historical examination of asylum in Israel, that sheds timely light onto themes of migration and identity across the Middle East.
Arab Media Moghuls Naomi Sakr, Jakob Skovgaard Petersen, Donatella Della Ratta
256 pages approx. 75,000 words => Middle East, Media Studies Rights sold: EG
Naomi Sakr is Professor of Media Policy at the Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, and Director of the CAMRI Arab Media Centre. Jakob SkovgaardPetersen is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Donatella Della Ratta is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Transformations in the Arab media landscape are a key element in the regional dynamics of political change. Where do the private owners of Arab media outlets stand on the scene? What part, if any, have they played in weakening dictatorships, countering sectarianism and political polarisation, and reforming business practices in the Arab world? Arab Media Moguls charts the rise of some leading investors and entrepreneurs in Arab media, examining their motives, management styles, financial performance and links to political power. Responding critically to scholarship on Western moguls, this book uncovers the realities of risk and success for Arab media potentates and billionaires.
Racism, Ethnicity & the Media in Africa Mediating Conflict in the Twenty-First Century Winston Mano 272 pages 70 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 60,000 words => African Media & Politics, Ethnic & Communications Studies Rights available: World
Winston Mano is Director of the Africa Media Centre, University of Westminster. He is also Principal Editor of the Journal of African Media Studies, and the author of African National Radio and Everyday Life: The Impact of Radio in the Digital Age (I.B.Tauris).
In today’s Africa racism and ethnicity have been implicated in serious conflicts – from Egypt to Darfur to South Africa that have cost lives and undermined efforts to achieve national cohesion and meaningful development. Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa sets about rethinking the role of media and communication in perpetuating, reinforcing and reining in racism, absolute ethnicity and other discriminations across Africa. It goes beyond the customary discussion of media racism and ethnic stereotyping to critically address broader issues of identity, belonging and exclusion. Topics covered include racism in South African newspapers, pluralist media debates in Kenya, media discourses on same-sex relations in Uganda and ethnicised news coverage in Nigerian newspapers.
Let 100 Voices Speak How the Internet is Transforming China and Changing Everything Liz Carter 256 pages 3 b&w illustrations approx. 60,000 words => Society, Media & Politics Rights available: World
Liz Carter is the former Managing Editor of Tea Leaf Nation, one of the most popular blogs covering China in the West, and writes regularly for The Atlantic Monthly and Foreign Policy. She has appeared on Al Jazeera and HuffPost Live as an expert on Chinese media and has written for various print publications.
From the Occupy movement in the Western world to the Arab Spring and the role of Twitter in the Middle East, the internet and social media is changing the global landscape. China is next. Despite being heavily-censored, China has over 560 million active internet users, more than double that of the USA. In this book, social media expert and China-watcher Liz Carter tells the story of how the internet in China is leading to a coming together of activists, ordinary people and cultural trendsetters on a scale unknown in modern history. News about protests and natural disasters, or gossip and satirical jokes, are practically uncensorable and spread quickly through Weibo – the Chinese Twitter - and the Chinese internet underground. More than that, a grassroots, foundational shift of assumptions and expectations is taking place, as Chinese men and women cast off the communist-era ‘stability at all costs’ mantra and find new forms of self-expression, creativity and communication with the world.
History Religion
Battles for Freedom The Use and Abuse of American History Eric Foner Eric Foner is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is one of America’s leading historians of the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. His books include The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution and Give Me Liberty! An American History.
January 2017 240 pages Approx. 75,000 words World rights available => American History, Politics
Eric Foner is one of America’s most prolific historians
American Radicalism especially relevant in today’s American politics
Wide-ranging historical and current affairs coverage
‘Nothing could be more timely, more needed than this collection of Eric Foner's work. For the depth and breadth of his intellect as well as the clarity and precision of his language, he has peers but no superiors. Throughout his career, Professor Foner has enlightened and provoked us to become our better selves.’ – Toni Morrison For almost four decades, Eric Foner, one of America's most distinguished historians, has introduced readers of his journalism to unknown or forgotten characters in American history, methodically unearthing the hidden history of American radicalism. In this collection of polemical pieces, Foner expounds on the relevance of Abraham Lincoln's legacy in the age of Obama and on the need for another era of Reconstruction. In addition to articles in which Foner calls out politicians and the powerful for their abuse and misuse of American history. Foner assesses some of his fellow leading historians of the late 20th century, including Richard Hofstadter, Howard Zinn and Eric Hobsbawm. Foner ends with an open leter to Bernie Sanders analysing the great tradition of radicalism that he has spent his career studing and which, he argues, Americans of progressive disposition should seek to celebrate and retrieve.
Talleyrand in London The Master Diplomat’s Last Mission Linda Kelly
Linda Kelly's books include Juniper Hall, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and most recently Holland House and Ireland's Minstrel (both I.B.Tauris). She has written for The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement and numerous other publications, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Wordsworth Trust.
February 2017 192 pages 26 b&w illustrations, 1 map Approx. 60,000 words World rights available => History
New angle on Talleyrand’s highlysuccessful career
New perspective on Georgian high society
Georgian era a particular period of fascination
A sparkling account of Prince Talleyrand’s last diplomatic mission. Few people had aroused more controversy than Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand-Périgord. A former bishop whose love affairs were notorious, and a turncoat who had abandoned every master he had served, he was widely detested by the French public. But the French ambassador was greeted as a celebrity in London, where the July Revolution – foreshadowing Britain’s own Reform Bill – had been hugely popular. London society had not yet acquired the virtuous tone of the Victorian era. The easy-going morals of the Regency had carried on into the reign of William IV, and the fact that Talleyrand’s niece by marriage, the Duchess of Dino, 37 years his junior, was not only his hostess but reputedly his mistress, merely added to the interest he induced. Talleyrand’s four years in London were the last and, in his own opinion, the most important of his diplomatic career. Linda Kelly’s sparkling narrative brings the period to life, providing a fascinating picture of one of Europe’s greatest statesmen as he appeared to English eyes.
British POWs and the Holocaust Witnessing the Nazi Atrocities Russell Wallis
Russell Wallis is Research Fellow at the Holocaust Research Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he gained his PhD in Modern History supervised by David Cesarani, and visiting Fellow at the Holocaust Educational Trust.
February 2017 272 pages Approx. 110,000 words World rights available => History, World War II
Appeals to the huge market for WWII and Nazi related history
An essential new oral history of the holocaust
Contains new primary source material
An extraordinary insight into what was known and when about the greatest crime of the 20th century. In the network of Nazi camps across wartime Europe, prisoner of war institutions were often located next to the slave camps for Jews and Slavs; so that British PoWs across occupied Europe, over 200,000 men, were witnesses to the holocaust. The majority of those incarcerated were aware of the camps, but their testimony has never been fully published. Here, using eye-witness accounts held by the Holocaust Educational Trust, Russell Wallis rewrites the history of British prisoners and the Holocaust during the Second World War. He uncovers the histories of men such as Cyril Rofe, an Anglo-Jewish PoW who escaped from a work camp in Upper Silesia and fled eastwards towards the Russian lines, recounting his shattering experiences of the so-called ‘bloodlands’ of eastern Poland. Wallis also shows how and why the knowledge of those in the armed forces was never fully publicised, and how some PoW accounts were later exaggerated or fictionalised.
Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World Christian Identity and Practice under Muslim Rule Charles Tieszen Charles Tieszen is associate professor at Simpson University and adjunct assistant professor at the Fuller Seminary. He received his PhD from the University of Birmingham and is the author of Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain and A Textual History of Christian–Muslim Relations.
February 2017 240 pages Approx. 70,000 words World rights available => Religion
Shines much needed light onto Christian–Muslim relations, the nature of inter-faith debates and the wider issues facing the communities living across the Middle East during the medieval period
By far the most comprehensive study of cross veneration in medieval Islam
The first in-depth theological polemic.
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One of the most common religious practices among medieval Eastern Christian communities was their devotion to venerating crosses and crucifixes. Yet many of these communities existed in predominantly Islamic contexts, where the practice was subject to much criticism and often resulted in accusations of idolatry. How did Christians respond to these allegations? Why did they advocate the preservation of a practice that was often met with confusion or even contempt? To shed light onto these questions, Charles Tieszen looks at every known apologetic or polemical text written between the eighth and fourteenth centuries to include a relevant discussion. With sources taken from across the Mediterranean basin, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, the result is the first in-depth look at a key theological debate which lay at the heart of these communities’ religious identities. By considering the perspectives of both Muslim and Christian authors, Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World also raises important questions concerning cross-cultural debate and exchange, and the development of Christianity and Islam in the medieval period.
The Croatian Spring Nationalism, Repression and Foreign Policy Under Tito Ante Batovic
Ante Batovic is a Cold War historian, with keen interest in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He published extensively on the Croatian post-war history, Yugoslav foreign policy in the Cold War and its role in the Non-Aligned Movement.
March 2017 288 pages 2 maps Approx. 95,000 words World rights excl. Croatia History, Politics, Balkan Studies
A unique angle on the Yugoslav spring based on new primary material
“Ante Batović’s book, based on extensive research in American, British, NATO, Croatian and Serbian archives, provides not just an authoritative account of an important, though relatively little known, episode in Cold War history. It shines a spotlight more generally on how the West viewed Yugoslavia as a pivotal state in the Cold War.” - Robin Harris Nationalism is a key topic within Balkan Studies, and the driving force behind the bloody and difficult history of the region. Under the charismatic Tito, the Yugoslavia state was successful in remaining ‘non-aligned’ - a friend of the West and the Soviet Union as it pursued its own vision of socialism. Using primary sources not previously utilized by western scholars, this book will document the ‘Croatian Spring’ – a movement ‘from below’ which began in the mid-sixties and pushed for liberalism and de-centralisation. A precursor to the successful Croatian Spring of the early 1970s, this flowering of political thought and action was suppressed. In particular the fall of Ranković – ousted for allegedly bugging Tito’s private apartment - marks the beginning of the end of the centralised and stable Yugoslav state. Batovic also looks at the role of the West, who felt a centralised and stable Yugoslavia was in their interests and therefore colluded in the initial repression of a reformist movement.
The First Mapping of America The General Survey of British North America Alex Johnson Alexander Johnson is an international authority on historical cartography. He has been a Senior Consultant in Cartography to Christie’s in London and was formerly head of the map department at one of the world’s leading antiquarian book dealers in New York.
March 2017 320 pages 57 b&w & 8pp colour illustrations Approx. 126,000 words World rights available => American History, Historical Geography, Cartography
Combines important cartographic scholarship with the machinations of high politics and commercial greed
Contains many previously unpublished maps
A vivid and compelling account of one of the most turbulent periods in British, American and Canadian history. Britain’s victory in the Seven Years War dramatically enlarged her North American empire. Eager to know more about their new territories, the British government commissioned a spectacularly ambitious survey to provide an accurate map of Britain’s entire North American empire. Known as the General Survey of British North America, it ranks as one of the most impressive technical achievements of the period, and provided vital intelligence for both economic and military purposes. The First Mapping of America tells the story of the General Survey, of the spectacular maps created and the extraordinary men who produced them: including the highly professional Samuel Holland, Surveyor-General in the North, and the brilliant but mercurial William Gerard De Brahm, SurveyorGeneral in the South. Holland and De Brahm’s spectacular maps, far from being obscure archival documents were at the very centre of the drama, as the as they battled both physical obstacles and political ones, fighting Crown administrators in London and wealthy speculators in the colonies. Alexander Johnson’s has produced a vivid and compelling account of a key moment in North American history and British history. Drawing upon maps reproduced here for the first time, he shows how these spectacular maps were responsible for shaping the thoughts and actions of the powerful and influential players of one of the most turbulent periods in British, American and Canadian history.
Kennedy and the Middle East The Cold War, Israel and Saudi Arabia Antonio Perra Antonio Perra is an associate lecturer in the Department of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. His field of expertise concerns the history of US interventionism in the Middle East, and he has authored several papers on more contemporary issues, including, 'From the Arab Spring to the Damascus Winter: The United States, Russia, and the new Cold War’ (2016).
March 2017 304 pages
An informative book that fills an important gap in the Cold War literature.
8 b&w illustrations Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => History, International Relations
The CIA is a major subject of study and this book will appeal to key scholarly markets: Cold War Studies, 20th Century American History and Political Science
There will be crossover sales to Warfare and Defence and Peace Studies institutions
At the height of the Cold War, the John F. Kennedy administration designed an ambitious plan for the Middle East – its aim was to seek rapprochement with Nasser’s Egypt in order to keep the Arab world neutral and contain the perceived communist threat. In order to offset this approach, Kennedy sought to grow relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and embrace Israel’s defense priorities – a decision which would begin the US-Israeli ‘special relationship’. Here, Antonia Perra shows for the first time how new relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel which would come to shape the Middle East for decades were in fact a by-product of Kennedy’s efforts at Soviet containment.
Greek Civil War The Strategy, Counterinsurgency and the Monarchy Spyridon Plakoudas
Spyridon Plakoudas is Lecturer at the Hellenic National Defence College and Panteion University. He holds a PhD in War Studies from the University of Reading.
March 2017 256 pages Approx. 120,000 words World rights available => Greek History, Communism & Cold War
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Uses unseen sources and original documents
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Complete analysis of government strategies for success in Greek Civil War
A new approach to the history of Greek Civil War. The Greek Civil War (1946-1949) was one of the few instances in the post-World War II era of a clear-cut and permanent victory by right-wing government forces over an insurgent communist movement. Spyridon Plakoudas here explores the factors which ultimately caused the downfall of the communist insurgency in Greece which had, at some points, seemed undefeatable. He questions whether the guerrilla movement fell victim to the feud between Stalin and Tito or whether the significant British and, above all, American aid in fact rescued the Greek monarchist regime from collapse. Plakoudas explores the strategies adopted by government forces in order to counter the communist insurgency, how external and internal actors influenced these policies and when, how and why these policies achieved success. Featuring previously unseen sources and documents, this book reveals the strategy and tactics of the monarchist regime.
The Korean Diaspora in Post-War Japan Geopolitics, Identity and NationBuilding Myung Ja Kim Myung Ja Kim is currently a Teaching Fellow in Northeast Asian Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She founded and was President of the NGO, World Tonpo Network, Tokyo, an organization that seeks the peaceful unification of North and South Korea.
April 2017 304 pages Approx. 102,000 words World rights available => Asian History
An important analysis of the mechanisms that lie behind nation -building policy, showing the conditions controlling a host state’s treatment of diasporic groups
Develops Mylonas’ theory of nation building by using the unique case study of the Zainichi
A comprehensive study ranging from 1945-2014. The Korean diaspora living in Japan - the Zainichi represent the only Korean migrant group that has not been granted citizenship by its host state. Yet despite being Korean nationals, with legal rights of abode in Korea, the Zainichi are culturally Japanese and have no intention of returning to their now divided homeland. The indistinct status of the Zainichi has meant that, since the late 1940s, two ethnic Korean associations, the Chongryun (proNorth) and the Mindan (pro-South) have been vying for political loyalty from the Zainichi, with both groups initially opposing their assimilation in Japan. Unlike the Korean diasporas living in Russia, China or the US, the Zainichi have become sharply divided along political lines as a result. Myung Ja Kim examines Japan’s changing national policies towards the Zainichi in order to understand why this group has not been fully integrated into Japan. Through the prism of this ethnically Korean community, the book reveals the dynamics of alliances and alignments in East Asia, including the rise of China as an economic superpower, the security threat posed by North Korea and the diminishing alliance between Japan and the US. Taking a post-war historical perspective, the research reveals why the Zainichi are vital to Japan’s state policy revisionist aims to increase its power internationally and how they were used to increase the country’s geopolitical leverage.
You Win or You Die The Ancient World of Game of Thrones Ayelet Haimson Lushkov Ayelet Haimson Lushkov is an Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. She has wide interests in Roman history, literature and reception. Her previous books are Magistracy and the Historiography in the Roman Republic and Reception and the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition (co-edited with W .Brockliss, P. Chaudhuri and K. Wasdin). She has written on Game of Thrones for The Guardian.
April 2017 272 pages 40 b&w illustrations Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => Ancient History & Classics, Fantasy & Myth
Must-have reading for all Game of Thrones fans
Offers the nuanced perspective of an ancient historian but also a keen fan’s eye-view
The first book to show just how saturated Game of Thrones is in the antique/classical world
When you play a game of thrones, you win or you die.’ - George R. R. Martin If the Middle Ages form the present-day backdrop to the continents of Westeros and Essos, then antiquity is their resonant past. In this essential sequel to Carolyne Larrington’s Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones, Ayelet Haimson Lushkov explores the echoes, from the Summer Islands to Storm’s End, of a rich antique history. She discusses, for example, the convergence of ancient Rome and the reach, scope and might of the Valyrian Freehold. She shows how the wanderings of Tyrion Lannister replay the journeys of Odysseus and Aeneas. She suggests that the War of the Five Kings resembles the War of the Four Emperors (68-69 AD). And she demonstrates just how the Wall and the Wildlings advancing on it connect with Hadrian’s bulwark against fierce tribes of Picts. This book reveals the remarkable extent to which the entire Game of Thrones universe is animated by its ancient past.
A Forgotten Man The Life and Death of John Lodwick Geoffrey Elliott
Geoffrey Elliott is an independent writer and historian. A retired investment banker, he is an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. He is the author of I Spy: The Secret Life of a British Agent; Kitty Harris: The Spy with 17 Names; Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War; From Siberia with Love: A Story of Exile, Revolution and Cigarettes and many more.
May 2017 264 pages 20 b&w illustrations Approx. 85,000 words World rights available => Biography, History, World War II
New perspective on early C20 literary scene
Remarkable WW2 career
Author has track-record in WW2 and espionage non-fiction
New life of a forgotten novelist. John Lodwick (1916-1959) was one of the great novelists of the early twentieth century. Yet his novels, and indeed his own extraordinary life story, have been virtually lost to the mists of time. Geoffrey Elliott here, for the first time, pieces together Lodwick’s eventful life, from his youth in Ireland, to his wartime experiences in the SOE and Special Boat Service, his subsequent literary career and his untimely death in a car crash in Spain at the age of just 43. Initially acclaimed by Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess, soon after his death Lodwick’s novels fell out of fashion and they have largely remained out-of-print since. Elliott makes the case for a revival in the fortunes of this singular English novelist, in a biography which sheds new light on the early twentieth century literary scene, the surrealist art world and the reallife experiences of World War II.
The Riviera at War World War II on the Côte d’Azur George G. Kundahl
George G. Kundahl was, until his retirement, a Major General in the U.S. Army. He is the author of Confederate Engineer: Training and Campaigning with John Morris Wampler; Alexandria Goes to War: Beyond Robert E. Lee and The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur. He holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Alabama and has been resident on the French Riviera for many years.
May 2017 336 pages 30 b&w illustrations Approx. 175,000 words World rights available => History, World War II
First history of World War II on the Riviera
Includes new information about the Battle of Toulon
The Cote d’Azur is one of France’s most visited regions
The complete history of World War II in southeastern France. During World War II three distinct forces opposed the Allies - Germany, Italy, and Japan. Few areas of the world experienced domination by more than a single one of these, but southeastern France – the region popularly known as the Riviera or Côte d’Azur - was one. Not only did inhabitants suffer through Italian Fascism and German Nazism but also under a third hardship at times even more oppressive - the rule of Vichy France. Following a nine-month prelude, the reality of World War II burst onto the Riviera in June 1940 when the region had to defend itself against the Italian army and ended in April 1945 with a battle against German and Italian forces in April 1945, a period longer than any other part of France. In this book, George G. Kundahl tells for the first time the full story of World War II on the French Riviera. Featuring previously unseen sources and photographs, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in wartime France.
The Tsar’s Armenians A Minority in Late Imperial Russia Onur Önol
Onur Önol is an instructor in the Department of History at Bilkent University, Ankara. He is a contributor to War and Collapse: World War I and the Ottoman State and regularly presents papers on late imperial Russia at conferences internationally.
May 2017 272 pages 10 b&w illustrations Approx. 95,000 words World rights available => History, Ethnic Minorities, World War I
Appeal to scholars of Ottoman, Armenian and Russian history
Fills a conspicuous void in the extant historiography
Based on extensive archival research
The first English-language study of the drastic reversal of relations between imperial Russia and their Armenian subjects on the eve of WW I. In 1903 Tsar Nicholas II issued a decree allowing the confiscation of Armenian Church property, marking the low point in relations between imperial Russia and its Armenian subjects. Yet just over a decade later, Russian Armenians were fully supportive of the Russian war effort. Drawing on previously untouched archival material and a range of secondary sources published in English, French, Russian and Turkish, this is the first English-language study of this drastic change in relations in the Caucasus. Onur Önol explains how and why the shift took place by looking in detail at the imperial Russian authorities and their relationship with the three pillars of the Russian Armenian community: the Armenian Church, the Armenian bourgeoisie and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun). Önol places the evolution within a context of wider political questions, such as the Russian revolutionary movement, Russia’s nationalities question, Tsarist fears of pan-Islamism, the path to World War I and the influence of key characters in Russian policy making, from Pyotr Stolypin to Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov.
The Women Who Built the Ottoman World Female Patronage and the Architectural Legacy of Gulnus Sultan Muzaffer Ozgules Muzaffer Ozgules is the Barakat Trust PostDoctoral Research Fellow at the Khalili Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
May 2017 304 pages b&w & colour illustrations, 2 maps Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => Ottoman History
Heavily illustrated
Ground-breaking research
The role of women increasingly important in the study of the Ottoman Empire
The extraordinary life and exceptional patronage of a previously neglected Ottoman royal woman. At the beginning of the 18th Century, the Ottoman Empire remained the grandest and most powerful of Middle Eastern Empires – it was also the ‘Golden Age’ of Ottoman patronage. One hitherto overlooked aspect of the empire’s remarkable cultural legacy was the role of powerful women often the head of the harem, or wives or mothers of Sultans. These educated and discerning patrons left a great array of buildings across the Ottoman lands; opulent, lavish and powerful palaces and mausoleums, but also essential works for ordinary citizens, such as bridges and waterworks. Muzaffer Ozgules here uses new primary scholarship and archaeological evidence to reveal the stories of these Imperial builders. Gulnus Sultan for example, the head of the imperial harem under Mehmed IV and mother to his sons, was often pictured on horseback, and travelled widely across the Middle East commissioning architects and craftsmen as she went. Her buildings were personal projects designed to showcase Ottoman power and they were built from Constantinople to Mecca, from modern-day Ukraine to Algeria. Ozgules seeks to re -establish the importance of some of these buildings, since lost, and traces the history of those that remain. The Women Who Built the Ottoman World is a valuable contribution to the architectural history of the Ottoman Empire, and to the growing history of the women within it.
Young Lothar An Underground Fugitive in Nazi Berlin Larry Orbach and Vivien OrbachSmith
May 2017 384 pages Approx. 90,000 words World rights available => History, Memoir
Highly respected and unique contribution to the literature of the period
Underground Berlin in WWII: completely untold story
Larry (Lothar) Orbach (1924-2008) grew up in Berlin and assumed the identity of Gerhard Peters from 1942-44. He spent the last year of the war in Auschwitz and emigrated to New York in 1946. Settling in New Jersey, Larry Orbach set up a jewellery business with his wife Ruth Geier – also a refugee from Nazi Berlin. Larry’s final years in his beloved New York were full and surrounded by friends from all walks of life. Vivien Orbach-Smith, Larry Orbach’s daughter, is an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at New York University and a freelance writer. The singular true story of hope amidst the darkness of Hitler’s Berlin. Lothar Orbach, the youngest son of a German Jewish family, was just 14 when the Nazis began rounding up Berlin’s Jews. His promising education was aborted; his close-knit family splintered. When the Gestapo came for Orbach’s mother on Christmas Eve 1942, they escaped with false papers; his mother found sanctuary with a family of Communists and Orbach – under the assumed identity of Gerhard Peters – entered Berlin’s underworld of ‘divers’. He scraped a living by hustling pool, cheating in poker and stealing – fighting, literally, to stay alive. But inwardly he remained just a boy, his mother’s son, a Jew holding desperately onto his shattered humanity. In the end, he was betrayed and sent to Auschwitz, on the last transport, in 1944. This singular coming of age story of life in the Berlin underground during WWII is, in essence, a story of hope, even happiness, in the very heart of darkness.
Dharma The Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh Traditions of India Veena R. Howard
Veena R. Howard is Assistant Professor of Religious and Asian Studies at the University of Oregon and author of Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action (2014).
June 2017 272 pages Approx. 85,000 words World rights available => Religion, Philosophy, Asian Studies
Contributors include many of the world’s foremost authorities in these different religions
Much needed comparative text book
Experts in the fields of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh studies here bring fresh insights to dharma in terms both of its distinctiveness and its commonality
‘In the Sanskrit language, religion goes by the name dharma, which in the derivative meaning implies the principle of the relationship that holds us firm, and in its technical sense means the virtue of a thing, the essential quality of it.’ — Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Poet and Writer) Dharma is central to all the indigenous religious traditions of India, which cannot adequately be understood apart from it. Often translated as ‘ethics’, ‘religion’ or ‘religious law’, dharma possesses elements of each of these but is not confined to any single category. Neither is it the equivalent of what many in the West might usually consider to be ‘a philosophy’. This much needed analysis of the history and heritage of dharma shows that it is instead a multi-faceted religious force, or paradigm, that has defined and that continues to shape South Asian civilization in a whole multitude of forms. Exploring ethics, practice, history and social and gender issues, the contributors correct philosophical misrepresentations that are increasingly widespread in the West, and point to ways of appreciating Indian religions in a manner appropriate to the practice of Eastern, rather than Western, tradition.
Fighting Proud The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars Stephen Bourne Stephen Bourne is a writer and historian. An expert on Black and LGBT British history, he has written for BBC History Magazine and History Today and is a regular contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. His most recent Amazon-bestselling book Black Poppies (History Press, 2013), a history of the contribution of black men and women to the First World War, won the Southwark Arts Forum Award for Literature.
June 2017 256 pages
The overdue portraits of Britain’s homosexual heroes rendered vividly through unseen photographs and their own words.
Approx. 60,000 words 30 b&w illustrations World rights available => History, Military History, LGBT
The fight for equal rights and representation for LGBT people is not over in Britain, and lifestyle freedom is still strictly censored elsewhere
Includes a wealth of longsuppressed wartime photography subsequently ignored by mainstream
In this astonishing new history of wartime Britain, historian Stephen Bourne unearths the fascinating stories of the gay men who served in the armed forces and at home, and brings to light the great unheralded contribution they made to the war effort. Fighting Proud weaves together the remarkable lives of these men, from RAF hero Ian Gleed – a Flying Ace twice honoured for bravery by King George VI – to the infantry officers serving in the trenches on the Western Front in WWI - many of whom led the charges into machine-gun fire only to find themselves court-marshalled after the war for indecent behaviour. Behind the lines, Alan Turing’s work on breaking the ‘enigma machine’ and subsequent persecution contrasts with the many stories of love and courage in Blitzed-out London, with new wartime diaries and letters unearthed for the first time. Bourne tells the bitterly sad story of Ivor Novello, who wrote the WWI anthem ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, and the crucial work of Noel Coward - who was hated by Hitler for his work entertaining the troops. Fighting Proud also includes a wealth of longsuppressed wartime photography subsequently ignored by mainstream historians. This book is a monument to the bravery, sacrifice and honour shown by a persecuted minority, who contributed during Britain’s hour of need.
A History of Stability and Change in Lebanon Foreign Interventions and International Relations Joseph Bayeh
Joseph N. Bayeh is an assistant professor at the University of Balamand, Lebanon. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Exeter.
June 2017 256 pages Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => Middle East Studies, History
Links domestic politics with international relations, giving the book a broader market in both of these areas
Offers a new international perspective on political developments in Lebanon
Covers a wide range of Lebanese history – including periods of civil war and unrest
A new and unique international perspective on Lebanon’s history, including its civil war. Lebanon is a country whose domestic politics have, even more than others in the region, been at the mercy of changes on the international stage. Having been under Ottoman and French rule in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the postWorld War II era has seen Lebanon subjected to Israeli, Syrian and American interventions which have all threatened the county’s stability as a state. Joseph Bayeh argues that it is this international dimension which holds the key to an in-depth understanding of the country. In support of this argument, Bayeh examines Lebanese history from its early days under the Ottomans to the present day in order to show how international shifts and conflicts have had their impact on Lebanon. With changes such as the fall of the Ottoman empire, the rise of US power after World War II, the end of the Cold War and the new focus on the region in the aftermath of 9/11, Lebanon has at various junctures been bolstered or undermined. Bayeh tracks all of this, offering insights into the workings of Lebanon’s domestic politics which will appeal to researchers of the international relations of the Middle East and Lebanon’s political history.
Mischka’s War A True Story of Survival In Nazi Dresden Sheila Fitzpatrick Sheila Fitzpatrick is Emerita Professor of History at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor of History at the University of Sydney. One of the most acclaimed historians of twentiethcentury Russia, she is the author of several books, including The Russian Revolution; Stalin’s Peasants, Everyday Stalinism, Tear off the Masks! and A Spy in the Archive: A Memoir of Cold War Russia (I.B.Tauris, 2013).
June 2017 320 pages 25 b&w illustrations Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => History, WW II, Memoir
Unique story, told using original diaries, letters and recollections
Beautifully told using author’s skills as a historian and memoirist
Offers new insights into wartime Germany and the realities of life under attack
A Fascinating story of survival in World War II. In 1943, 22-year-old Latvian Mischka Danos chanced on a terrible sight - a pit filled with the bodies of Jews killed by the occupying Germans. A few months later, escaping conscription into the Waffen-SS in Riga, Mischka entered Hitler’s Reich itself on a student exchange to Germany. There, as the war drew to an end, he narrowly escaped death in the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. As he made his escape from Hitler’s Reich he fell ill and was incarcerated in hospital before finally reuniting with his resourceful mother Olga, who had made her own way out of Riga, saving some Jews along the way. The diaries, correspondence and later recollections of mother and son provide a vivid recreation of life in occupied Germany, where anxiety, fear and loss were tempered by friendship, and where the ineptitude of international and occupation bureaucracies added its own touch of black humour. Sponsored as immigrants by one of the Jews Olga had saved, they eventually reached New York in the early 1950s. As refugee experiences go, they were among the lucky ones— but even luck leaves scars. The author, who met and married Mischka forty years after these events, turns her skills as a historian and wry eye as a memoirist to telling this remarkable story
The Makers of Modern Syria The Rise and Fall of Syrian Democracy 1918-1948 Sami Moubayed Sami Moubayed is a Syrian historian and journalist. His articles on Middle East affairs have appeared in a variety of newspapers. He is a blogger with The Huffington Post and an online panellist with The Washington Post. He is the author of Syria and the USA: Washington’s Relations with Damascus from Wilson to Eisenhower (IBT) Under the Black Flag: At the Frontier of the New Jihad (IBT).
August 2017 288 pages 7 b&w illustrations Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => International Relations & Politics, Middle East, History
A new perspective on Syrian history
Author with growing track-record and recognition
Access to insider sources and documents
A very thorough and detailed look at the life of key Syrian nationalist political figures in the 1940s. After Under the Black Flag, Sami Moubayed is returning to his routes in C20 Syrian history for his next book, a consideration of Syria’s ‘founding fathers’ in the years 1918-1948, based on the records of Syria’s defence minister Ahmad alSharabati, a man whose political career, although brief, tells an important chapter of the history of Syria. It’s a tragic story of an entire generation of Syrian nationalists, filled with justice denied, hopes dashed, and democracy amputated. The book tries to shed light on Ahmad al-Sharabati’s role in the Palestine War of 1948, and examines his reasons for resigning as Minister of Defense, an act which foreshadowed the calamity of Husni al-Za’im’s coup d'état. In this book, Sami Moubayed tries to unearth important and long-hidden truths about Ahmad alSharabati and his generation of Syrian nationalists who constituted the first democratic government of Syria.
The Reporting of Genocide Media, Mass Violence and Human Rights David Patrick
David Patrick is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He completed his PhD in Modern History at Sheffield University.
August 2017 224 pages Aprox. 100,000 words World rights available => International Relations, History
A Controversial and important subject matter
Contains a mass of primary research
‘We have all been bystanders to genocide: The crucial question is why.' - Samantha Power The West’s responses to genocide are mixed. While the UK and US are committed to the ideals of human rights, freedom and equality, reactions are tempered by geopolitical ‘noise’, preconceived ideas of worth and media attentionspans. This study of the media response to genocide looks at the two most recent genocides – those of Rwanda in 1994 and Bosnia in 1992-5. Among other observations, David Patrick argues in particular that an over-reliance on the Holocaust as the framing device we use to try and come to terms with such horrors can lead to slow responses, mis-interpretation and category errors – in both Rwanda and Bosnia, much energy was expended trying to ascertain whether these regions qualified for ‘genocide’ status as compared to the Holocaust, and such a debate can be harmful. He shows how genocide in and of itself is not enough to guarantee press interest, that in order to gain the attention of the world such tragedies are reduced to stereotypes - framed in terms of innocent victims and brutal oppressors which can sometimes over-simplify the situation on the ground, and that such problems lead to mixed and inadequate responses from governments. In fact, the British and American responses to Bosnia and Rwanda were insufficient and despite rhetoric of human rights, genocide is often reduced to a debating point.
Stalin’s Maverick Spy The Story of a British Super-Agent in World War II Hamish MacGibbon
Hamish MacGibbon was Director of the Publishing House James and James. He is the son of James and Jean MacGibbon.
August 2017 288 pages 25 b&w illustrations Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => History, Biography, World War II
Unknown World War II story
New perspective on espionage, communism and D-Day planning
Sheds light on UK-US-USSR relations during World War II
A gripping World War II espionage story. A few years before he died James MacGibbon confessed to his close family that he had spied for the Soviet Union during World War II. At the end of the war MI5 suspected him of espionage and interrogated him but he did not confess. Nevertheless they kept James, his wife Jean and their young family under close surveillance for a number of years, regularly intercepting their mail and recording their telephone conversations. Only after James’s death did the true significance of what he might have revealed become clear – in his wartime office role, James had access to the plans for Operation Overlord, D-Day. In this book, James’s son Hamish tells the story of his parents, their interaction with the communist party and their flirtation with wartime espionage. It is a unique portrait of two very ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary events of World War Two and the Cold War.
The Myth of Hero and Leander The History an Reception of an Enduring Greek Legend Silvia Montiglio Silvia Montiglio is Basil L. Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University. Her previous books include Silence in the Land of Logos; Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture; From Villain to Hero: Odysseus in Ancient Thought; Love and Providence: Recognition in the Ancient Novel; and, most recently, The Spell of Hypnos: Sleep and Sleeplessness in Ancient Greek Literature (I.B.Tauris).
September 2017 304 pages 10 b&w integrated Approx. 102,000 words World rights available => Classic & ancient History, Mythology
The first time this fascinating subject has been written about in English
Author is a leading and senior USbased interpreter of ancient Greek myth and legend
General appeal as well as to students of classics & comparative literature
One of the most resilient tales from the ancient world, whose resonant themes of love and loss, and of sex and death, speak to us still across both time and the distant straits of the sea. Hero and Leander are the protagonists in a classical tale of epic but tragic love. Hero lives secluded in a tower on the European shore of the Hellespont, and Leander on the opposite side of the passage. Since they cannot hope to marry, the couple resolves to meet in secret: each night he swims across to her, guided by the light of her torch. But the time comes when a winter storm kills both the light and Leander. At dawn, Hero sees her lover’s mangled body washed ashore, and so hurls herself from the tower to meet him in death. Silvia Montiglio here shows how and why this affecting story has proved to be one of the most popular and perennial mythologies in the history of the West. Discussing its singular drama, danger, pathos and eroticism, the author explores the origin of the legend and its rich and varied afterlives. She shows how it was used by Greek and Latin writers; how it developed in the Middle Ages – notably in the writings of Christine de Pizan – and Renaissance; how it inspired Byron to swim the Dardanelles; and how it has lived on in representations by artists including Rubens and Frederic Leighton.
Religion in the Roman World Gods, Myth and Magic in Ancient Rome Juliette Harrisson
Juliette Harrisson is Lecturer in History at Newman University, Birmingham. She is the author of Dreams and Dreaming in the Roman Empire: Cultural Memory and Imagination (2013).
September 2017 304 pages 25 b&w integrated Approx. 85,000 words World rights available => Classic & Ancient History, Religion & Mythology
The widest-ranging and most accessible treatment of Roman religion in print
Written by an experienced pedagogue and teacher
Considerable general plus interdisciplinary student appeal
The Gods of Rome are brought back to life in this lively and accessible history of Roman Religion. The Romans had a persisting and voracious appetite for myth, magic and ritual. They invoked the local gods to rain down punishment on adulterers or thieves. They burned fragrant resin for the protecting deities of hearth and home. They sacrificed at temples to bring glory to the divine person of the emperor. And they conducted secret rites of initiation into cults like those devoted to Isis, Cybele, Dionysus and Mithras. Juliette Harrisson shows ancient Rome to have been a hive of religious experimentation. In her new and comprehensive survey, she takes her readers from the turmoil of the Late Republic to the high point of imperial rule (133 BC-AD 235), thereby exploring the many facets of religiosity in the Roman world. She examines, among other topics, worship of the state-sanctioned Olympian gods and the role of religion in Roman politics; the impact of ‘mystery cults’ focused on Greek, Near Eastern and Egyptian deities; attitudes towards witchcraft, superstition and the early monotheists; and evidence for ancient atheism. An epilogue discusses the rise of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.
Building Stalinism The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space Cynthia Ruder Cynthia Ruder is an associate professor of Russian Studies at the University of Kentucky. She previously published Making History for Stalin, which focused on the 1933 construction of the Belomor Canal. She has also contributed to peerreviewed journals and edited collections and was the only non-Russian citizen who participated in the conference to commemorate the 70th anniversary (2007) of the Moscow Canal’s opening in 1937.
October 2017 304 pages
An inter-disciplinary and innovative exploration of the all-pervasive nature of Stalinism and its afterlife in Russia today.
10 b&w integrated Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => History, Soviet Society
Extensive use of archival sources, personal interviews and contemporary material
The first English-language study of this signature Stalinist
construction project
Considers the complex legacy of Stalinism in Russia today
Today the 80-mile-long Moscow Canal is a source of leisure for Muscovites, a conduit for tourists and provides the city with more than 60% of its potable water. Yet the past looms heavy over these quotidian activities: the canal was built by Gulag inmates at the height of Stalinism and thousands died in the process. In this wide-ranging book, Cynthia Ruder argues that the construction of the canal physically manifests Stalinist ideology and that the vertical, horizontal, underwater, ideological, artistic and metaphorical spaces created by it resonate with the desire of the state to dominate all space within and outside the Soviet Union. Approached through an extensive range of archival sources, personal interviews and contemporary documentary materials these include a diverse body of artefacts – from waterways, structures, paintings, sculptures, literary and documentary works, and the Gulag itself. Building Stalinism concludes by analysing current efforts to reclaim the legacy of the canal as a memorial space that ensures that those who suffered and died building it are remembered.
Corinth in Late Antiquity A Greek, Roman and Christian City Amelia Brown
Amelia Brown is a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She has published widely on ancient Greece in the late antique and early Byzantine periods.
September 2017 272 pages 20 b&w illustrations Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => Classic History, Mediterranean Archaeology
The first ever comprehensive scholarly guide to Corinth in Late Antiquity
Makes use of all available sources, creating the definitive and synthetic work on the topic
Accessibly written, with researcher, student and trade audiences in mind.
A history of roman and late Antique Corinth. Late antique Corinth was on the frontline of the radical political, economic and religious transformations that swept across the Mediterranean world from the second to sixth centuries CE. A strategic merchant city, it became a hugely important metropolis in Roman Greece and, later, a key focal point for early Christianity. In late antiquity, Corinthians recognised new Christian authorities; adopted novel rites of civic celebration and decoration; and destroyed, rebuilt and added to the city’s ancient landscape and monuments. Drawing on evidence from ancient literary sources, extensive archaeological excavations and historical records, Amelia Brown here surveys this period of urban transformation, from the old Agora and temples to new churches and fortifications. Influenced by the methodological advances of urban studies, Brown demonstrates the many ways Corinthians responded to internal and external pressures by building, demolishing and repurposing urban public space, thus transforming Corinthian society, civic identity and urban infrastructure. In a departure from isolated textual and archaeological studies, she connects this process to broader changes in metropolitan life, contributing to the present understanding of urban experience in the late antique Mediterranean.
Inferno A Cultural History of Hell Margaret Kean
Margaret Kean is a Lecturer in English at the University of Oxford and Dame Gardner Fellow in English at St Hilda's College Oxford. She is the author of John Milton's Paradise Lost: A Sourcebook and has contributed to a variety of publications including Blackwell's A Companion to Milton.
October 2017 288 pages 40 b&w illustrations Approx. 90,000 words World rights available => History, Literature
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A unique and diverse exploration of a fascinating subject
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Highly promotable author
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Strong cross-disciplinary appeal: to students of literature, history, religion and art - and general readers
Doom, damnation and everlasting anguish: why do we remain so fascinated by the horrors of hell? Eternal fire, diabolical torment, graphic mortification of the flesh and a smoke-filled underworld pierced by the despairing shrieks of the damned: the idea of Hell has for thousands of years exerted both fascination and terror. And despite its horrors, it is hard to resist its almost seductive allure. Whether expressed in medieval Doom paintings and grim warnings of everlasting suffering, or in modern psychological interpretations, the belief in a ghastly terminus for the souls of the cursed has proved remarkably resilient and persistent. It has far outlived specific portrayals by artists, writers and theologians, and has seemed far more resonant an idea than either a heavenly Paradise or New Jerusalem. In her rich and wide-ranging book, Margaret Kean tells the history of hell through literature, philosophy, art, music and film. She shows that affirmations of human freedom and the value of the individual have remained closely tied to the notion of hell even as contemporary narratives have replaced a medieval mindset. From Dante and Bosch to Blake and Milton, and from Joseph Conrad and Primo Levi to Angel Heart, Alien 3 and Event Horizon, Kean vividly explores hell as both secular confessional and divinely ordained penal colony - as metaphor for alienation and infernal locale for one's never-ending worst nightmare.
Iran and the West Cultural Perceptions from the Sasanian Empire to the Islamic Republic Margaux Whiskin (Ed)
Margaux Whiskin is a lecturer in the languages department at the University of Warwick. She has previously taught at Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the University of St. Andrews, where she also received her PhD.
October 2017 352 pages 20 b&w illustrations Approx. 120,000 words World rights available => History, Middle East, Politics
Appeal to a wide range of disciplines
Supported by foreword from Ali Ansari
A timely reassessment of mutual perceptions between Iran and the West.
cultural
Since the age of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD), Iran and the West have time and again appeared to be at odds. Iran and the West charts this contentious and complex relationship by examining the myriad ways the two have perceived each other, from antiquity to today. Across disciplines, perspectives and periods contributors consider literary, imagined, mythical, visual, filmic, political and historical representations of the ‘other’ and the ways in which these have been constructed in, and often in spite of, their specific historical contexts. Many of these narratives, for example, have their origin in the ancient world but have since been altered, recycled and manipulated to fit a particular agenda. Ranging from Tacitus, Leonidas and Xerxes via Shahriar Mandanipour and Azar Nafisi to Rosewater, Argo and 300, this interdisciplinary and wide-ranging volume is essential reading for anyone working on the complex history, present and future of Iranian–Western relations
Jane Austen’s England A Walking Guide Anne-Marie Edwards
Anne-Marie Edwards is the author of over 40 travel guides to the English countryside. She contributed to the The Jane Austen Companion and Walker’s Britain. Edwards originally broadcast most of these walks on the BBC. She is a member of the Ramblers Association, the Backpackers Club, The British Shakespeare Association and the Jane Austen Society.
October 2017 224 pages 60 b&w illustrations, 15 maps Approx. 120,000 words World rights available => Travel, History, Literature
The only walking guide to Jane Austen's England
Vividly illuminates all the places that appear in Austen's novels
Austen has a huge fanbase and this will be essential reading for all Austen fans and travellers
A unique guide to Jane Austen’s England. This is an engaging account of Austen’s life and work, arranged as a series of walking tours through the towns and countryside she knew and loved – the settings for her novels. The 15 circular walks in the book describe the country houses, churches, great estates and elegant cities Austen knew and introduce the reader to the real-life people she met, many of whom gave her hints for the characters in her novels. The walks include Godmersham House, the inspiration for Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice and the view from Box Hill, scene of the ‘exploring party’ in Emma.
Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England A History of Sorcery and Treason Francis Young
October 2017 256 pages Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => History, Religion, Magic & Folklore
A big book with a big idea: the political events of English history cannot be understood except through the history of magic and its accusers
First book to explore English magical treason as quite separate and distinct from witchcraft
Author is an authoritative figure on witchcraft and magic
Francis Young is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and gained a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. He is the author and editor of several books, including English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553-1829, The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767, The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds: History, Legacy and Discovery and A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity.
Can English history be understood apart from accusations of magic and treason? The 400-year history of a vital and neglected topic. Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the ‘superstition’ embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond.
The Special Operations Executive (SEO) in Burma Jungle Warfare and Intelligence Gathering in World War II Richard Duckett
Richard Duckett is Lecturer in History at Reading College. He is an expert on WWII in Burma.
October 2017 276 pages 12 b&w integrated, 2 maps Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => Military History
Contains previously unpublished primary sources
Also story of decolonisation, the end of imperial military history and of a changing of the guard
The fist study of the SEO’s extensive and extraordinary activities in occupied Burma during the Second World War. Using newly declassified documents, The Special Operations Executive in Burma uncovers the history of SOE’s involvement in Burma from 1941 until beyond Burma’s independence from the British Empire in 1948. Richard Duckett charts the unknown story of the secret war against the Japanese, fought by the Special Operations Executive in the jungle and mountains of Burma.
This is the first study of the Special Operations Executive’s extensive and extraordinary activities in occupied Burma during the Second World War. Operating in the jungle, deep behind enemy lines, the SOE played a key role in the retaking of Burma after the Japanese invasion. At the edges of the old British Empire, the story is also one of decolonization, the end of imperial military history and of a changing of the guard – the SOE were often men ‘trained on the playing fields of Eton’ and their exploits carry a romantic, even nostalgic colour, for military historians. This book is based on absolutely meticulous primary research in the National Archives – most of the material is unseen and has never been used, and there are even some wonderful photographs we can print for the first time.
The Old Believers in Imperial Russia Oppression, Opportunism and Religious Identity in Tsarist Moscow Peter De Simone Peter De Simone is an assistant professor in the School of History at Utica College, New York. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at conferences internationally on the Old Believers.
October 2017 250 pages 20 b&w illustrations Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => History, Religion
Appeal to both history and religion lists
Based on previously unexplored archival material from a scholar with rare linguistic skill (Church Slavonic and Old Church Slavonic)
Research serves as a microcosm of a changing Russia over a broad chronological span.
A thoroughly researched account of a religious minority in Imperial Russia. Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.’ So spoke Russian monk Hegumen Filofei of Pskov in 1510, proclaiming Muscovite Russia as heirs to the legacy of the Roman Empire following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The so-called ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ spurred the creation of the Russian Orthodox Church, although just a century later a further schism occurred, with the Old Believers (or ‘Old Ritualists’) challenging Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical and ritualistic reforms and laying their own claim to the mantle of Roman legacy. While scholars have commonly painted the subsequent history of the Old Believers as one of survival in the face of persistent persecution at the hands of both tsarist and church authorities, Peter De Simone here offers a more nuanced picture. Based on research into extensive, yet mostly unknown, archival materials in Moscow, he shows the Old Believers as versatile and opportunistic, and demonstrates that they actively engaged with, and even challenged, the very notion of the spiritual and ideological place of Moscow in Imperial Russia. Ranging in scope from Peter the Great to Lenin, this book will be of use to all scholars of Russian and Orthodox Church history.
Embracing the Darkness A Cultural History of Witchcraft John Callow John Callow is a writer and historian specializing in seventeenth-century politics, witchcraft and popular cultures. He is the author of 13 books, including of Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century Europe, which he coauthored with Geoffrey Scarre. He broadcasts regularly for the BBC.
November 2017 304 pages 10 b&w illustrations Approx. 119,000 words World rights available => History, Soviet Union
The first comprehensive cultural history of the witch to be published in English
Gripping reading for historians, students of culture and religion, and general readers
Interest in witchcraft is exponential: from films, novels and rock songs to exponents of MBS and Wicca
Few cultural icons are as powerful and resonant as the figure of the witch. As dusk fell on a misty evening in 1521, Martin Luther –hiding from his enemies at Wartburg Castle – found himself seemingly tormented by demons hurling walnuts at his bedroom window. In a fit of rage, the great reformer threw at the Devil the inkwell from which he was preparing his colossal translation of the Bible. A belief in the supernatural, and in black magic, has been central to European cultural life for 3000 years. From the Salem witch trials to the macabre novels of Dennis Wheatley; from the sadistic persecution of eccentric village women to the seductive sorceresses of TV’s Charmed; and from Derek Jarman’s punk film Jubilee to Ken Russell’s The Devils, John Callow brings the twilight world of the witch, mage and necromancer to vivid and fascinating life.
Stalin’s Economic Advisors The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy Kyung-Deok Roh
Kyung-Deok Roh is assistant professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, GIST, in South Korea. He has lectured and contributed to peer-reviewed journals extensively on the subject of the Varga Institute.
November 2017 256 pages 10 b&w illustrations Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => History, Soviet Union
Offers a new and telling insight into Stalin’s relationship with the academic milieu, and the complex genesis of Soviet policy
Based on extensive archival research
A thorough and comprehensive companion to the Soviet Union’s most influential think tank – and the first book-length treatment
The first comprehensive study of the Varga Institute from its inception to its collapse. Soviet foreign policy in the Stalin era is commonly assumed to have been a direct product of either Marxist ideology or the leader’s whims. Both assumptions, however, oversimplify the complex and subtle factors involved in its creation and implementation. Kyung-Deok Roh provides an alternative, more nuanced, explanation and demonstrates the key role played by Stalin’s economic advisors. The so-called ‘Varga Institute’ , a ‘think tank’ led by Evgenii Varga, developed a unique scholarly discourse on the capitalist economy and international politics, based on an amalgam of Marxist economics and, notably, the work of American economist W. E. Mitchell. The institute’s scholarship, which suggested the resilience, adaptability and stability of the capitalist economy, created the discursive space within which decisions were made, and influenced Stalin to move increasingly from aggressive strategies towards more cautious international policies. This first comprehensive study of this pivotal group, demonstrates the many complex ways that Soviet foreign policy was created and sheds new light onto the controversial relationship between Soviet academia and the party.
Antiquity Imagined The Remarkable Legacy of Egypt and the Ancient Near East Robin Derricourt 304 pages 40 b&w illustrations, 1 map approx. 100,000 words => Ancient History, Mythology & Esoterism, Archaeology Rights available: World Robin Derricourt is Honorary Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of Inventing Africa: History, Archaeology and Ideas and of People of the Lakes: Archaeological Studies in Northern Zambia.
Outsiders have long attributed to the Middle East, and especially to ancient Egypt, meanings that go way beyond the rational and observable. The region has been seen as the source of civilization, religion, the sciences and the arts; but also of mystical knowledge and outlandish theories, whether about the Lost City of Atlantis or visits by alien beings. In his exploration of how its past has been creatively interpreted by later ages, Robin Derricourt surveys the various claims that have been made for Egypt - particularly the idea that it harbours an esoteric wisdom vital to the world’s survival. He looks at ‘alternative’ interpretations of the pyramids, from maps of space and time to landing markers for UFOs; at images of the Egyptian mummy and at the popular mythology of the ‘pharaoh’s curse’; and at imperialist ideas of racial superiority that credited Egypt with spreading innovations and inventions as far as the Americas, Australia and China. His book is the first to show in depth how ancient Egypt and the surrounding lands have so continuously and seductively tantalised the Western imagination.
Babylon Legend, History and the Ancient City Michael Seymour
384 pages 27 b&w illustrations approx. 100,000 words => Ancient History, Religion, Middle East, Archaeology Rights available: World
Michael Seymour is a Research Associate in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He is co-author (with I.L. Finkel) of Babylon: Myth and Reality.
Babylon: for eons its very name has been a byword for luxury and wickedness. ‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept’, wrote the psalmist, ‘as we remembered Zion’. One of the greatest cities of the ancient world, Babylon has been eclipsed by its own sinful reputation. More recently the site of Babylon has been the centre of major excavation, yet the spectacular results of this work have done little to displace the many other fascinating ways in which the city has endured and reinvented itself in culture. Saddam Hussein, for one, notoriously exploited the Babylonian myth to associate himself and his regime with its glorious past. Why has Babylon so creatively fired the human imagination, with results both good and ill? Why has it been so enthralling to so many, and for so long? Michael Seymour’s book ranges extensively over space and time and embraces art, archaeology, history and literature. The author brings to light a carnival of disparate sources dominated by powerful and intoxicating ideas such as the Tower of Babel and the city of sin.
The Spell of Hypnos Sleep and Sleeplessness in Ancient Greek Literature Silvia Montiglio 336 pages 11 b&w illustrations approx. 90,000 words => Mythology, History, Religion Rights available: World
Silvia Montiglio is Basil L Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University. Her previous books include Silence in the Land of Logos; Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture; From Villain to Hero: Odysseus in Ancient Thought and Love and Providence: Recognition in the Ancient Novel.
Sleep was viewed as a boon by the ancient Greeks: sweet, soft, honeyed, balmy, care-loosening, as the Iliad has it. But neither was sleep straightforward, nor safe. It could be interrupted, often by a dream. It could be the site of dramatic intervention by a god or goddess. It might mark the transition in a narrative relationship, as when Penelope for the first time in weeks slumbers happily through Odysseus’ vengeful slaughter of her suitors. Silvia Montiglio’s imaginative and comprehensive study of the topic illuminates the various ways writers in antiquity used sleep to deal with major aspects of plot and character development. The author shows that sleeplessness, too, carries great weight in classical literature. Exploring recurring tropes of somnolence and wakefulness in the Iliad, the Odyssey, Athenian drama, the Argonautica and ancient novels by Xenophon, Chariton, Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, this is a unique contribution to better understandings of ancient Greek writing.
Twin Horse Gods The Dioskouroi in Mythologies of the Ancient World Henry John Walker 288 pages approx. 85,000 words => Ancient History, Mythology Rights available: World
Henry John Walker is Senior Lecturer in Classical and Medieval Studies at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. He is the author of Theseus and Athens (1995) and of Memorable Deeds and Sayings: One Thousand Tales from Ancient Rome (2004).
The twin deities known by the ancient Greeks as the Dioskouroi, and by the Romans as the Gemini, were popular figures in the classical world. They were especially connected with youth, low status and service, and were embraced by the common people in a way that eluded those gods associated with regal magnificence or the ruling classes. Despite their popularity, no dedicated study has been published on the horse gods for over a hundred years. Henry John Walker here addresses this neglect. His comparative study traces the origins, meanings and applications of the twin divinities to social and ritual settings in Greece, Vedic India (where the brothers named Castor and Pollux were revered as Indo-European gods called the Asvins), Etruria and classical Rome. He demonstrates, for example, that since the Dioskouroi were regarded as being halfway between gods and men, so young Spartans – undergoing a fierce and rigorous military training – saw themselves as standing midway between animal and human. Such creative interpretations of the myth thus played a central role in the culture and society of antiquity.
The Devil A New Biography Philip C. Almond
288 pages 26 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 85,000 words => Religion, History, Philosophy Rights sold: NL, US
Philip C. Almond is Emeritus Professor of Religion in the University of Queensland. He has published several titles with I.B.Tauris.
It is often said that the devil has all the best tunes. He also has as many names as he has guises. Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub (in Christian thought), Ha-Satan or the Adversary (in Jewish scripture) and Iblis or Shaitan (in Islamic tradition) has throughout the ages and across civilizations been a compelling and charismatic presence. For two thousand years the supposed reign of God has been challenged by the fiery malice of his opponent, as contending forces of good and evil have between them weighed human souls in the balance. In this rich and multitextured biography, Philip C Almond explores the figure of the devil from the first centuries of the Christian era through the rise of classical demonology and witchcraft persecutions to the modern post-Enlightenment ‘decline’ of Hell. The author shows that the Prince of Darkness, in all his incarnations, remains an irresistible subject in history, religion, art, literature and culture.
Afterlife A History of Life After Death Philip C. Almond
256 pages 34 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 85,000 words => Religion, History of Ideas, Philosophy Rights sold: DE, HU, PL, US Philip C. Almond is Emeritus Professor of Religion in the University of Queensland. He has published several titles with I.B.Tauris.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come? The end of life has never meant the extinction of hope. People perpetually have yearned for, and often been terrified by, continuance beyond the horizon of mortality. Ranging across time and space, Philip Almond here takes his readers on a remarkable journey to worlds both of torment and delight. He travels to the banks of the Styx, where Charon the grizzled boatman ferries a departing spirit across the river only if a gold obol is first placed for payment on the tongue of its corpse. He transports us to the legendary Isles of the Blessed, walks the hallowed ground of the Elysian Fields and plumbs the murky depths of Tartarus, primordial dungeon of the Titans. The pitiable souls of the damned are seen to clog the soot-filled caverns of Lucifer even as the elect ascend to Paradise. Including medieval fears for the fate of those consumed by cannibals, early modern ideas about the Last Day and modern scientific explorations of the domains of the dead, this first full treatment of the afterlife in Western thought evokes many rich imaginings of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Limbo.
The Witches of Warboys An Extraordinary Story of Sorcery, Sadism and Satanic Passion Philip C. Almond 240 pages 20 b&w illustrations approx. 85,000 words => History, Witchcraft Rights sold: ES
Philip C. Almond is Emeritus Professor of Religion in the University of Queensland. He has published several titles with I.B.Tauris.
When one of the five daughters of Robert and Elizabeth Throckmorton suddenly fell sick in 1589, no one in the small English village of Warboys could have predicted the terrifying events that would follow. Or envisaged that four years later, in April 1593, the Throckmortons' neighbours Alice, Agnes and John Samuel, would be dragged before a country court on charges of sorcery, enchantment and murder. There is no more dramatic story in the annals of English witchcraft than that of the witches of Warboys. Yet despite a rich and colourful cast of characters, and a potent mixture of tension and pathos to match anything in the later Salem witch trials, it has never before been told in full. At the heart of the narrative coils a dark account of possession by demons, of malevolent spirits, of trust broken and of children accursed. Philip Almond leads us into a half-forgotten world of horror and crime, of victims and victimisers, of spectres, sex with the devil and 'scratching' the witch: a macabre and dangerous world where nothing is as it seems, where evil begets evil, and where innocence is betrayed.
From Gabriel to Lucifer A Cultural History of Angels Valery Rees
288 pages 21 b&w illustration approx. 90,000 words => Religion, History of Ideas Rights sold: DE
A prominent scholar of the Renaissance, Valery Rees is a Senior Member of the School of Economic Science in London. She co-edited Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (2002), and has featured as a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4's flagship ideas programme, In Our Time.
For sceptics, angels may be no more than metaphors: poetic devices to convey, at least for those with a religious sensibility, an active divine interest in creation. But for others, angels are absolutely real creatures: manifestations of cosmic power with the capacity either to enlighten or annihilate those whose awestruck paths they cross. Valery Rees offers the first comprehensive history of these beautiful, enigmatic and sometimes dangerous beings, whose existence and actions have been charted across the eons of time and civilization. Whether exploring the fevered visions of Ezekiel and biblical cherubim; Persian genii; Arab djinn; Islamic archangels; the austere and haunting icons of Andrei Rublev; or Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire and the more benign idea of the watchful guardian angel, the author shows that the ubiquity of these celestial messengers reveals something profound, if not about God or the devil, then about ourselves: our perennial preoccupation with the transcendent.
Winter is Coming The Medieval World of Game of Thrones Carolyne Larrington
272 pages 40 b&w illustrations approx. 80,000 words => Medieval History, Visual Culture, Fantasy & Myth Rights sold: CN, DE, EE, ES Carolyne Larrington is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English Literature at St John’s College, Oxford. Her previous books include She is the author of several titles published with I.B. Tauris.
Game of Thrones is a phenomenon. As Carolyne Larrington reveals in this essential companion to George R. R. Martin’s fantasy novels and the HBO mega-hit series based on them the show is the epitome of water-cooler TV. It is the subject of intense debate in national newspapers; by students, bloggers and cultural commentators contesting the series’ startling portrayals of power, sex and gender. Yet no book has divulged how George R R Martin constructed his remarkable universe out of the Middle Ages. Discussing novels and TV series alike, Larrington explores among other topics: sigils, giants, dragons and direwolves in medieval texts; ravens, old gods and the Weirwood in Norse myth; and a gothic, exotic orient in the eastern continent, Essos. From the White Walkers to the Red Woman, from Casterley Rock to the Shivering Sea, this is an indispensable guide to the twenty-first century’s most important fantasy creation.
The Land of the Green Man A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles Carolyne Larrington 264 pages 31 b&w illustrations, 1 map approx. 90,000 words => History, Mythology & Folklore Rights sold: CN
Carolyne Larrington is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English Literature at St John’s College, Oxford. Her previous books include She is the author of several titles published with I.B. Tauris.
Beyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the psyches of those who inhabit them? In this sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of fantastical beings has moulded the nation’s cultural history. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o’Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee and Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes of burning coal. This is a book that will captivate all those who long for the wild places: the mountains and chasms where giants lie in wait.
King Arthur’s Enchantresses Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition Carolyne Larrington 272 pages 36 b&w illustrations approx. 90,000 words => Mythology, History, Religion Rights sold: CN
Carolyne Larrington is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English Literature at St John’s College, Oxford. Her previous books include She is the author of several titles published with I.B. Tauris.
King Arthur summons visions of courtly chivalry, towering castles, windswept battlefields, heroic quests, and above all of the monarch who dies but who one day shall return. The Arthurian legend lives on as powerfully and enduringly as ever. Yet central to these stories are the mysterious, sexually alluring enchantresses - spellcasters, mistresses of magic who wield extraordinary influence over Arthur's life and destiny. Carolyne Larrington takes her readers on a quest to discover why these dangerous women continue to bewitch us. She explores them as they appear in poetry and painting, on the Internet and TV, in high and popular culture and shows that whether they be chaste or depraved, necrophiliacs or virgins, they are manifestations of the Other, frightening and fascinating in equal measure.
Magic and Masculinity Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era Frances Timbers 232 pages 10 b&w illustrations approx. 100,000 words => Early Modern History, Religion, Witchcraft Rights available: World
Frances Timbers is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Victoria, Canada. She holds a PhD from University of Toronto.
In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic – the attempted communication with angels and demons – both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender. The majority of male magicians acted from a position of control and command commensurate with their social position in a patriarchal society; other men, however, used the notion of magic to subvert gender ideals while still aiming to attain hegemony. Whilst women who claimed to perform magic were usually more submissive in their attempted dealings with the spirit world, some female practitioners employed magic to undermine the patriarchal culture and further their own agenda. Frances Timbers studies the practice of ritual magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries focusing especially on gender and sexual perspectives. Using the examples of wellknown individuals who set themselves up as magicians (including John Dee, Simon Forman and William Lilly), as well as unpublished diaries and journals, literature and legal records, this book provides a unique analysis of early modern ceremonial magic from a gender perspective.
The Female Mystic Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages Andrea Janelle Dickens
256 pages 15 b&w illustrations approx. 85,000 words => Religion, History, Gender Studies Rights available: World Andrea Janelle Dickens is Assistant Professor of Ancient and Medieval Church History at United Theological Seminary, Trotwood, Ohio. She has written many essays and articles on medieval theology and spirituality, and is also the author of The I.B.Tauris History of Monasticism: The Western Tradition.
The Middle Ages saw a flourishing of mysticism that was astonishing for its richness and distinctiveness. The medieval period was unlike any other period of Christianity in producing people who frequently claimed visions of Christ and Mary, uttered prophecies, gave voice to ecstatic experiences, recited poems and songs said to emanate directly from God and changed their ways of life as a result of these special revelations. Many recipients of these alleged divine gifts were women. Yet the female contribution to western Europe's intellectual and religious development is still not well understood. Popular or lay religion has been overshadowed by academic theology, which was predominantly the theology of men. This timely book rectifies the neglect by examining a number of women whose lives exemplify traditions which were central to medieval theology but whose contributions have tended to be dismissed as 'merely spiritual' by today's scholars. This attractive survey provides an introduction to thirteen remarkable women and sets their ideas in context.
Renaissance Woman Gaia Servadio
288 pages 20 b&w illustrations approx. 90,000 words => History, Biography Rights sold: IT
Gaia Servadio is a broadcaster, journalist, editor and writer, whose books include Mafioso, Luchino Visconti: A Biography, The Real Traviata and Rossini.
The Renaissance created a new vision of womanhood and indeed a ‘New Woman’, proposes Gaia Servadio in this rich feast of a book. She dates the birth of this revolutionary movement not to the traditionally quoted year of 1492 but to the invention of the printing press in 1456, which made books – and hence education – available to women. Central to her story are the lives of such as Vittoria Colonna, whose extraordinary mutual love with Michelangelo is told here, Tullia d’Aragona, poet and the best known courtesan of her age, and French poet Louise Labé, who fought in battle in male clothes. They are placed centre stage to the Renaissance’s power plays, paintings and architecture, courtesans and popes, music and manners, fashion, food, cosmetics, changing societies and the language of poetry and symbols
The Secret Life of the Georgian Garden Beautiful Objects and Agreeable Retreats Kate Felus 272 pages 70 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 80,000 words => Social History Rights available: World
Kate Felus is a garden historian and historic landscape consultant. She researches & writes about designed landscapes of all periods, specializing particularly in eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury parks and gardens.
Georgian landscape gardens are among the most visited and enjoyed of the UK’s historical treasures The Georgian garden has also been hailed as the greatest British contribution to European Art, seen as a beautiful composition created from grass, trees and water – a landscape for contemplation. But scratch below the surface and history reveals these gardens were a lot less serene and, in places, a great deal more scandalous. Beautifully illustrated in colour and black & white, this book is about the daily life of the Georgian garden. It reveals its previously untold secrets from early morning rides through to evening amorous liaisons. It explains how by the 18th century there was a desire to escape the busy country house where privacy was at a premium, and how these gardens evolved aesthetically, with modestly-sized, far-flung temples and other eye-catchers, to cater for escape and solitude as well as food, drink, music and fireworks.
The Georgian Menagerie Exotic animals in Eighteenth-Century London Christopher Plumb
256 pages 12 b&w illustrations approx. 75,000 words => Social History, British Empire Rights available: World
Christopher Plumb is an independent historian. He has worked as a television and museum consultant and holds a PhD from Manchester University.
In the 18th century, it would not have been impossible for a visitor to London to encounter an elephant or a kangaroo making its way down the Strand, heading towards the menagerie of Mr Pidcock at the Exeter Change. Pidcock’s was just one of a number of commercial menagerists who plied their trade in London in this period – attracting visitors and potential customers. As the British Empire expanded and seaborne trade flooded into London’s ports, the menagerists gained access to animals from the most far-flung corners of the globe. Many aristocratic families sought to create their own private menageries with which to entertain their guests, whilst for the less well-heeled, touring exhibitions of exotic creatures – both alive and dead – satisfied their curiosity for the animal world. Whilst many exotic creatures were treasured as a form of spectacle, others fared less well – turtles and civet cats were sought after as ingredients for soup and perfume respectively. In this book, Christopher Plumb introduces many tales of exotic animals in London in this period in an entertaining and enlightening book which will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in Georgian Britain.
British Imperial What the Empire Wasn’t Bernard Porter
224 pages 16 b&w illustrations approx. 55,000 words => Social History Rights available: World
Bernard Porter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Newcastle. He has published ten books before this one, many of them on imperial themes, including Critics of Empire, The Lion’s Share and The AbsentMinded Imperialists.
The British Empire is often misunderstood. Judgments of it differ widely, from broadly adulatory - a ‘great’ enterprise, spreading ‘civilization’ through the world; to the blame that is often put on it for most of the world’s ills today, including racism, exploitation and the problems of the Middle East. In this provocative book, Bernard Porter argues that many of these judgments arise from some fundamental misreadings of the nature, causes and effects of British imperialism, which was a more complex, ambivalent and in some ways accidental phenomenon than it is often taken to be. Drawing on his fifty years’ experience of research and writing on the subject, Porter aims to clear away many of the misconceptions that surround the story of the British Empire’s rise, governance and fall; and to point some ways to a fairer (though not necessarily more favourable) assessment of it. He addresses the connections of imperialism with capitalism, racism and British domestic culture, and ends with some reflections on the modern repercussions of both the Empire itself, and the myths which have sprung up around it.
Original Spin Downing Street and the Press in Victorian Britain Paul Brighton 288 pages 14 b&w illustrations approx. 97,000 words => History, Politics Rights available: World
Paul Brighton is Executive Principal Lecturer and Head of the Department of Media and Film at the University of Wolverhampton. He was previously a journalist and worked for BBC Radio 4 and BBC News 24.
Secret lunches, off-the-record briefings, the leaking of confidential information and tightly-organised media launches the well-known world of modern political spin. But is this really a new phenomenon or have politicians been manipulating the press for as long as newspapers have existed? In this important new book, Paul Brighton shows that spin is not something dreamed up by modern, media-savvy politicians. In fact, it was one of the best-kept political secrets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From Peel and Palmerston to Gladstone and Disraeli, Prime Ministers have all tried to manipulate the press to a greater or lesser extent. Brighton uncovers the covert contacts between Westminster and Fleet Street and reveals how the Victorian occupants of 10 Downing Street secretly conveyed their viewpoints via the newspapers. For the first time, Original Spin tells the whole, unvarnished, story.
The Fall of the House of Speyer The Story of a Banking Dynasty George W. Liebmann
256 pages 45 b&w illustrations approx. 84,000 words => History, Economic History Rights available: World
George W. Liebmann is a lawyer and historian specialising in American and international history. His publications include Diplomacy Between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of the Modern World and The Last American Diplomat: John D. Negroponte and the Changing Face of US Diplomacy (both I.B.Tauris).
The dramatic story of the last fifty years of the Speyer banking dynasty, a Jewish family of German descent, is surprisingly little known today. Yet at the turn of the 20th century, Speyer was the third largest investment banking firm in the United States, behind only Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb. It had branches in London, Frankfurt and New York, and the projects it financed included the Southern Pacific Railroad, the London Underground and the infrastructure of the new Cuban republic. Later, it was the first major banking firm to finance Germany’s Weimar Republic, as well as providing League of Nations loans to Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria. Yet, the firm was doomed by the nationalist passions aroused by World War I. Its English partner was denaturalised and exiled; its American partner enjoyed reduced standing because of his connection to Germany; and the Frankfurt branch closed with the coming of the Third Reich, its German partner fleeing into exile. The firm was dissolved in 1939, a surprisingly anticlimactic end to one of the great international banking companies of modern times. George W. Liebmann here tells the story of the firm and the family – shedding new light on the protagonists of a remarkable dynasty.
Drink and Culture in 19th Century Ireland The Alcohol Trade and the Politics of the Irish Public House Bradley Kadel 256 pages 45 b&w illustrations approx. 85,000 words => Social & Cultural History Rights available: World
Bradley Kadel is Assistant Professor of History at Fayetteville State University, University of North Carolina.
The vibrant Irish public house of the nineteenth century hosted broad networks of social power, enabling publicans and patrons to disseminate tremendous influence across Ireland and beyond. During the period, affluent publicans coalesced into one of the most powerful and sophisticated forces in Irish parliamentary politics. They commanded an unmatched economic route to middle-class prosperity, inserted themselves into the centre of crucial legislative debates, and took part in fomenting the issues of class, gender, and national identity which continue to be contested today. From the other side of the bar, regular patrons relied on this social institution to construct, manage and spread their various social and political causes. From Daniel O’Connell to the Guinness dynasty, the Acts of Union to the Great Famine, and Christmas boxes to Fenianism; Bradley Kadel offers a first and much-needed scholarly examination of the ‘incendiary politics of the pub’ in nineteenth-century Ireland.
The University of Cambridge A New History Gill R. Evans
400 pages 46 b&w illustrations, 2 maps approx. 120,000 words => History, General Interest Rights sold: CN
Gill R. Evans is Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectural History in the University of Cambridge. The author of over 50 books, she is also general editor of the I.B.Tauris History of the Church.
The intertwined stories of the great English 'Varsity' universities have many colourful aspects in common, yet each also boasts elements of true distinctiveness. So while the histories of Oxford and Cambridge are both characterised by seething town and gown rivalries, doctrinal conflicts and heretical outbursts, shifts of political and religious allegiance and gripping stories of individual heroism and defiance, they are also narratives of difference and distinctiveness. In this first history of it’s kind, G. R. Evans explores the remarkable and unique contribution that Cambridge University has made to society and culture, both in Britain and right across the globe, and will subsequently publish her history of Oxford University to complete a major new history of the two universities. Ranging across 800 years of vivid history, packed with incident, Evans here explores great thinkers such as John Duns Scotus - the 13th century Franciscan Friar who gave his name his name to 'dunces' - and celebrates the extraordinary molecular breakthroughs of Watson and Crick in the 20th century.
The University of Oxford A New History Gill R. Evans
384 pages 53 b&w illustrations approx. 120,000 words => History, General Interest Rights sold: CN
Gill R. Evans is Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectural History in the University of Cambridge. The author of over 50 books, she is also general editor of the I.B.Tauris History of the Church.
The University of Oxford was a medieval wonder. After its foundation in the late 12th century it made a crucial contribution to the core syllabus of all medieval universities — the study of the liberal arts law, medicine and theology — and attracted teachers of international calibre and fame. In her concise and much-praised new history, G. R. Evans reveals a powerhouse of learning and culture. Over a span of more than 800 years Oxford has nurtured some of the greatest minds, while right across the globe its name is synonymous with educational excellence. From dangerous political upheavals caused by the radical and inflammatory ideas of John Wyclif to the bloody 1555 martyrdoms of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley; and from John Ruskin's innovative lectures on art and explosive public debate between Charles Darwin and his opponents to gentler meetings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Inklings in the 'Bird and Baby', Evans brings Oxford's revolutionary events, as well as its remarkable intellectual journey, to vivid and sparkling life.
The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon Mark Jarrett 544 pages 44 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 125,000 words => History, Diplomacy, Politics Rights available: World
Mark Jarrett holds a PhD in History from Stanford University. He has taught at Hofstra University and Stanford University.
Two centuries ago, Europe emerged from one of the greatest crises in its history. In September 1814, the rulers of Europe and their ministers descended upon Vienna to reconstruct Europe after two decades of revolution and war, with the major decisions made by the statesmen of the great powers — Castlereagh, Metternich, Talleyrand, Hardenberg and Emperor Alexander of Russia. The territorial reconstruction of Europe, however, is only a part of this story. It was followed, in the years 1815 to 1822, by a bold experiment in international cooperation and counter-revolution, known as the ‘Congress System’. The Congress of Vienna and subsequent Congresses constituted a major turning point – the first genuine attempt to forge an ‘international order’, to bring long-term peace to a troubled Europe, and to control the pace of political change through international supervision and intervention. Based upon extensive research, this book provides a fresh look at a pivotal but often neglected period.
Kitchener Hero and Anti-Hero Brad C. Faught
320 pages 26 b&w illustrations approx. 120,000 words => Naval & Military History, World War I Rights available: World
C. Brad Faught is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Tyndale University College in Toronto.He is the author of Into Africa: The Imperial Life of Margery Perham; The New A-Z of Empire (both published by I.B.Tauris).
The years before World War I were the ‘Age of the Dreadnought’. The monumental battleship design, first introduced by Admiral Fisher to the Royal Navy in 1906, was quickly adopted around the world and led to a new era of maritime warfare. In this book, Roger Parkinson provides a rewriting of the naval history of Britain and the other leading naval powers - Germany, America and Japan - from the 1880s to the early years of World War I. He shows how the dreadnought enabled the Royal Navy to develop from being primarily the navy of the ‘Pax Britannica’ in the Victorian era to being a war-ready fighting force in the early years of the twentieth century. The ensuing era of intensifying naval competition rapidly became a full-blooded naval arms race, leading to the development of super-dreadnoughts and escalating tensions between the European powers. Providing a truly international perspective on the dreadnought phenomenon, this book will be essential reading for all naval history enthusiasts and anyone interested in World War I.
Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire A History of the Fraternity and its Influence in Syria and the Levant Dorothe Sommer 336 pages 31 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 100,000 words => Middle East & Social History Rights available: World
Dorothe Sommer holds a PhD in History from The University of Leiden. She formerly worked at The Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism at The University of Sheffield.
The network of freemasons and Masonic lodges in the Middle East is an opaque and mysterious one, and is all too often seen – within the area – as a vanguard for Western purposes of regional domination. But here, Dorothe Sommer explains how freemasonry in Greater Syria at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century actually developed a life of its own, promoting local and regional identities. She stresses that during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, freemasonry was actually one of the first institutions in what is now Syria and Lebanon which overcame religious and sectarian divisions. Indeed, the lodges attracted more participants – such as the members of the Trad and Yaziji Family, Khaireddeen Abdulwahab, Hassan Bayhum, Alexander Barroudi and Jurji Yanni - than any other society or fraternity. Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire analyses the social and cultural structures of the Masonic network of lodges and their interconnections at a pivotal juncture in the history of the Ottoman Empire, making it invaluable for researchers of the history of the Middle East.
Politics and Peasantry in Post-War Turkey Social History, Culture and Modernization Sinan Yildirmaz 304 pages 4 b&w illustrations approx. 90,000 words => Turkish & Modern European History Rights available: World
Sinan Yildirmaz is Assistant Professor of History at Istanbul University and an expert on the cultural history of Modern Turkey. He lives and works in Istanbul.
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed following the First World War, the feudal system which had survived untouched in much of Anatolia began to change. Kemal Atatürk’s task of building a nation ‘from the people up’ meant that the peasantry, by far Turkey’s largest ethnographic group, became an important symbol of social cohesion. Here, Sinan Yildirmaz analyses the history of modern Turkey through the material culture of this peasantry – their speeches, social club documents, art and diaries – and reveals a rich social and political life which flowered after the Second World War. Politics and the Peasantry in Post-War Turkey is the first history to show how the changing peasantry laid the foundations for the modern Turkish state, and will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Ottoman Empire and of the History of Modern Turkey.
Dreadnought The Ship that Changed the World Roger Parkinson
320 pages 26 b&w illustrations approx. 106,000 words => Naval & Military History, World War I Rights available: World
Roger Parkinson is a naval historian with a PhD in Naval History from University of Exeter. He is the author of The Late Victorian Navy.
The years before World War I were the ‘Age of the Dreadnought’. The monumental battleship design, first introduced by Admiral Fisher to the Royal Navy in 1906, was quickly adopted around the world and led to a new era of maritime warfare. In this book, Roger Parkinson provides a rewriting of the naval history of Britain and the other leading naval powers - Germany, America and Japan - from the 1880s to the early years of World War I. He shows how the dreadnought enabled the Royal Navy to develop from being primarily the navy of the ‘Pax Britannica’ in the Victorian era to being a war-ready fighting force in the early years of the twentieth century. The ensuing era of intensifying naval competition rapidly became a full-blooded naval arms race, leading to the development of super-dreadnoughts and escalating tensions between the European powers. Providing a truly international perspective on the dreadnought phenomenon, this book will be essential reading for all naval history enthusiasts and anyone interested in World War I.
Reckless Fellows The Gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps Edward Bujak
224 pages 46 b&w illustrations approx. 66,000 words => Military History, World War II Rights available: World
Edward Bujak is Associate Professor of History at Harlaxton College, the British campus of the University of Evansville, Indiana. He is the author of England’s Rural Realms: Landholding and the Agricultural Revolution.
The Royal Flying Corps, later the Royal Air Force, was formed in 1912 and went to war in 1914 where it played a vital role in reconnaissance, supporting the British Expeditionary Force as ‘air cavalry’ and also in combat, establishing air superiority over the Imperial German Air Force. Edward Bujak here combines the history of the air war, including details of strategy, tactics, technical issues and combat, with a social and cultural history. The RFC was originally dominated by the landed elite, in Lloyd George’s phrase ‘from the stateliest houses in England’, and its pilots were regarded as ‘knights of the air’. Harlaxton Manor in Lincolnshire, seat of landed gentry, became their major training base. Bujak shows how, within the circle of the RFC, the class divide and unconscious superiority of Edwardian Britain disappeared – absorbed by common purpose, technical expertise and by an influx of pilots from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. He thus provides an original and unusual take on the air war in World War I, combining military, social and cultural history.
The Secret World Behind the Curtain of British Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War Hugh Trevor-Roper 272 pages 12 b&w illustrations approx. 107,000 words => History, World War II, Intelligence & Espionage Rights available: World
Hugh Trevor-Roper was the most brilliant historian of his generation. An expert in the history of early modern Britain and Nazi Germany, he served in the Secret Intelligence Service during World War II. He was the author of numerous books, including his famous investigation of Hitler’s last days.
During World War II, Britain enjoyed spectacular success in the secret war between hostile intelligence services, enabling a substantial and successful expansion of British counterespionage. Hugh Trevor-Roper’s experiences working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the war had a profound impact on him and he later observed the world of intelligence with particular sharpness. To him, the subjects of wartime espionage and the complex espionage networks that developed in the Cold War period were as worthy of profound investigation and reflection as events from the more distant past. Expressing his observations through some of his most ironic and entertaining correspondence, articles and reviews, Trevor-Roper wrote vividly about some of the greatest intelligence characters of the age – from Kim Philby and Michael Straight to the Germans Admiral Canaris and Otto John. Including some previously unpublished material, this book is a sharp, revealing and personal first-hand account of the intelligence world in World War II and the Cold War.
Hugh Trevor-Roper The Wartime Journals Richard Davenport-Hines
336 pages 18 b&w illustrations, 2 maps approx. 118,000 words => History, World War II, Intelligence & Espionage Rights available: World Richard Davenport-Hines is the author of many books, including A Night at the Majestic and The Pursuit of Oblivion.
As a British Intelligence Officer during World War II, Hugh Trevor -Roper was expressly forbidden from keeping a diary due to the sensitive and confidential nature of his work. However, he confided a record of his thoughts in a series of slender notebooks inscribed OHMS (On His Majesty’s Service). The Wartime Journals reveal the voice and experiences of TrevorRoper, a war-time ‘backroom boy’ who spent most of the war engaged in highly-confidential intelligence work in England including breaking the cipher code of the German secret service, the Abwehr. He became an expert in German resistance plots and after the war interrogated many of Hitler’s immediate circle, investigated Hitler’s death in the Berlin bunker and personally retrieved Hitler’s will from its secret hiding place. The posthumous discovery of Trevor-Roper’s secret journals unknown even to his family and closest confidants - is an exciting archival find and provides an unusual and privileged view of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany. . At the same time they offer an engaging and reflective study of both the human comedy and personal tragedy of wartime.
The Shadow Man At the Heart of the Cambridge Spy Circle Geoff Andrews
288 pages 12 b&w illustrations approx. 100,000 words => History, Communism, Biography Rights available: World
Geoff Andrews is a writer and historian, who specialises in the history of political ideas and movements. His previous books include The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure and Not a Normal Country: Italy after Berlusconi.
James Klugmann appears as a shadowy figure in the legendary history of the Cambridge spies. As both mentor and friend to Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and others, Klugmann was the man who recruited promising students deemed ripe for conversion to the communist cause. This perception of him was reinforced following the release of his MI5 file and the disclosure of Soviet intelligence files in Moscow. These revealed his key part in the recruitment of John Cairncross, the so-called ‘fifth man’, as well as his pivotal war-time role in the Special Operations Executive in shifting Churchill and the allies to support Tito and the communist Partisans in Yugoslavia. In this book, Geoff Andrews reveals Klugmann’s story in full for the first time, uncovering the motivations, conflicts and illusions of those drawn into the world of communism and the sacrifices they made on its behalf.
Aftermath The Makers of Postwar World Richard Crowder
320 pages 16 b&w illustrations, 2 maps approx. 109,000 words => History, World War II & Cold War, Communism Rights available: World
Richard Crowder is an independent writer and historian. He studied at Oxford, and at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University. He works as a UK diplomat, but writes in a personal capacity.
In a single decade, between 1940 and 1950, the old world order collapsed, and a new one was created. Old European empires – France, Germany and the United Kingdom – receded, replaced by two new superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States. This shift in power was accompanied by efforts to create a new form of diplomacy: internationalism, working through multilateral bodies such as the United Nations, the IMF and the European Coal and Steel Community. New concepts emerged, like human rights and decolonisation. But there were darker shadows too, cast by the onset of the Cold War: the failure to establish international controls on atomic energy, or the growth of the national security state and modern intelligence apparatus. Idealism and old fashioned power politics evolved into an uneasy cohabitation.
The Holocaust Sites of Europe A Historical Guide Martin Winstone
456 pages 46 b&w illustrations, 34 maps approx. 150,000 words => History, World War II, European Studies Rights sold: NL
Martin Winstone is a writer and teacher. He also undertakes educational work for the Holocaust Educational Trust.
The Holocaust is the gravest crime in recorded history, committed on a human and geographical scale which is almost unimaginable. To try to bridge this gap and better understand the true significance of the Holocaust, as well as its scale and magnitude, millions of people each year now travel to the former camps, ghettos and other settings for the atrocities. The Holocaust Sites of Europe offers the first comprehensive guide to these sites, including much practical information as well as the historical context. It will be an indispensable guide for anyone seeking to add another layer to their understanding of the Holocaust by visiting these important sites for themselves. This guide includes a survey of all the major Holocaust sites in Europe, from Belgium and Belarus to Serbia and Ukraine. It includes not only the notorious concentration and death camps, but also less well known examples, such as Sered' in Slovakia, together with detailed descriptions of massacre sites, as well as the ghettos, ‘Euthanasia’ centres and Roma and Sinti sites which witnessed similar crimes.
The History of a Forgotten German Camp Nazi Ideology and Genocide at Szmalcówka Tomasz Ceran 240 pages 11 b&w illustrations approx. 70,000 words => History, World War II, Genocide, Eastern Europe Rights available: World excpt PL
Tomasz Ceran is a Polish historian who works for the education branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, Poland. He holds a PhD from Nicholas Copernicus University, Torun, where he also teaches.
Although often overlooked, anti-Polish sentiment was central to Nazi ideology. At the outset of World War II, Hitler initiated a process of ‘depolonization’ (Entpolonisierung) which resulted in the death or displacement of a significant number of Polish people living in Nazi-occupied territories. By examining policies of indirect extermination through a detailed study of Szmalcówka, a ‘displacement’ camp located in Toru? in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Tomasz Ceran explores the terrible consequences of Nazi ideology. He provides both an indepth historical account of a little-known camp and an important analysis of Nazi practices and policy-making in the Polish territories which were annexed. A strong addition to World War II literature, Ceran’s book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in World War II, Polish History, Nazi ideology and the nature of violence and resilience.
In the Shadow of Hitler Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe Rebecca Haynes, Martyn Rady 344 pages approx. 115,000 words => History, Political Theory Rights available: World
Rebecca Haynes is Senior Lecturer in Romanian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Martyn Rady is Professor of Central European History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London.
Many important right-wing political figures from the late nineteenth century and inter-war period have been overshadowed in history by Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Rebecca Haynes here assesses the careers of seventeen of the most important figures in right-wing politics in Central and Eastern Europe during this period and reveals the significance of leaders whose impact has been overlooked. Some of these were Nazisympathisers; others rejected German National Socialism in favour of rival nationalist and right-wing ideologies and programmes. But all played a role in modern European political history that cannot be ignored. This book seeks to draw some of the leading right-wing politicians and thinkers in Central and Eastern Europe out from under Hitler’s shadow.
The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government Martin Winstone 320 pages 20 b&w illustrations, 2 maps approx. 115,000 words => History, World War II, Holocaust Studies Rights sold: NL. PL
Martin Winstone is an Education Officer for the Holocaust Educational Trust. He is the author of The Holocaust Sites of Europe: An Historical Guide (I.B.Tauris).
After the German and Soviet attack on Poland in 1939, vast swathes of Polish territory, including Warsaw and Kraków, fell under Nazi occupation in an administration which became known as the ‘General Government’. The region was not directly incorporated into the Reich but was ruled by a German regime, headed by the brutal and corrupt Governor General Hans Frank. This was indeed the dark heart of Hitler’s empire. As the principal ‘racial laboratory’ of the Third Reich, it was the site of Aktion Reinhard, the largest killing operation of the Holocaust, and of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing against Poles which was intended to be a template for the rest of eastern Europe. This book provides a thorough history of the General Government and the experiences of the Poles, Jews and others trapped in its clutches. Employing previously underused sources, Martin Winstone provides a unique insight into the occupation regime which dominated much of Poland during World War II.
Killing the Enemy Assassination Operations During World War II Adam Leong Kok Wey 272 pages 1 map approx. 100,000 words => History, World War II, Nazi Germany Rights available: World Adam Leong Kok Wey completed his PhD in Special Operations and Military History at the University of Reading. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the National Defence University of Malaysia.
During World War II, the British formed a secret division, the ‘SOE’ or Special Operations Executive, in order to support resistance organisations in occupied Europe. It also engaged in ‘targeted killing’ – the assassination of enemy political and military leaders. The unit is famous for equipping its agents with tools for use behind enemy lines, such as folding motorbikes, miniature submarines and suicide pills disguised as coat buttons. But its activities are now also gaining attention as a forerunner to today’s ‘extra-legal’ killings of wartime enemies in foreign territory, for example through the use of unmanned drones. Adam Leong’s work evaluates the effectiveness of political assassination in wartime using four examples: Heydrich’s assassination in Prague (Operation Anthropoid); the daring kidnap of Major General Kreipe in Crete by Patrick Leigh Fermor; the failed attempt to assassinate Rommel, known as Operation Flipper; and the American assassination of General Yamamoto.
Moroccan Dreams Oriental Myth, Colonial Legacy Claudio Minca, Lauren Wagner
320 pages 76 b&w illustrations approx. 115,000 words => Historical Geography, Postcolonial & Cultural Studies Rights available: World
Claudio Minca is Head and Professor of Cultural Geography. Lauren Wagner is a cultural geographer and linguistic anthropologist. She is a member of the Cultural Geography Group at the University of Wageningen.
Morocco has long been a mythic land firmly rooted in the European imagination. For more than a century it has been appropriated by writers, artists and explorers such as Pierre Loti, Edith Wharton, Eugene Delacroix, Paul Bowles and Elias Canetti. In Moroccan Dreams, the authors explore the ways in which this legacy is being recreated for nostalgic consumption by those seeking the authentic experience of the orient. Taking the reader on a tour, both real and imaginary, to sites that form the quintessential Morrocan experience, including the capital city Rabat, the medina at Fez, Marakkech, the Kasbah, the desert, Tangier, and the gentrified colonial elegance of Essaouira, they unravel the elements that are so appealing about this imagined experience. Richly illustrated, Moroccan Dreams provides an enticing journey that will delight all those captivated by the culture and spatialities of the European colonial enterprise and all those enamoured of Morocco and its extraordinary geographie.
Visitors to Verona Lovers, Gentlemen and Adventurers Caroline Webb
264 pages 16 colour illustrations, 2 maps approx. 100,000 words => History, Travel, Literature Rights available: World
Caroline Webb graduated in History from the University of London and read Italian and Art History in Cambridge and Verona. She has worked as a historical researcher and teacher and is coauthor of The Earl and His Butler in Constantinople: The Secret Diary of an English Servant among the Ottomans (I.B.Tauris).
Even before the advent of mass tourism, Verona was a popular destination with travellers, including those undertaking the popular ‘Grand Tour’ across Europe. In this book, Caroline Webb compares the experiences of travellers from the era of Shakespeare to the years following the incorporation of the Veneto into the new kingdom of Italy in 1866. She considers their reasons for visiting Verona as well as their experiences and expectations once they arrived. From the late 17th century and the popular ‘Grand Tours’ to the 19th century and the increase of visitors from across Europe and across the Atlantic with the arrival of the railway, the author is keen to explore the fabled city of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In comparing a myriad of varied accounts, this book provides an unrivalled perspective on the history of one of Italy’s most seductive cities.
Strolling Through Rome The Definitive Walking Guide to the Eternal City Mario Erasmo 352 pages 14 b&w illustrations approx. 115,000 words => History, Travel Rights available: World
Mario Erasmo is Professor of Classics at the University of Georgia. He is the author of several books on the cultural history of Italy including Reading Death in Ancient Rome and Death: Antiquity And Its Legacy (all I.B.Tauris) with extensive experience teaching and leading tours throughout Italy, France, and the UK.
Rome, the Eternal City - birthplace of western civilisation and soul of the ancient world - has a history that stretches back two thousand five hundred years. It is also one of the most-visited places in the world, but where does one begin to delve into two millennia of history, culture, art and architecture, whilst also navigating the vibrant modern city? Mario Erasmo here guides the traveller through Rome's many layers of history, exploring the streets, museums, piazze, ruins and parks of this ‘city of the soul’. Punctuated with anecdote, myth and legend, these unique walks often retrace the very steps taken by ancient Romans, early Christians, medieval pilgrims, Renaissance artists and aristocrats on the Grand Tour. Here is a rich cultural history of Rome that brings its epic past alive, illuminating the extraordinary sights and fascinating secrets of one of Europe's most beguiling cities.
Palermo, City of Kings The Heart of Sicily Jeremy Dummett
288 pages 26 b&w & colour illustrations, 12 maps approx. 95,000 words => History, Travel Rights available: World
Jeremy Dummett is an expert on the history of Sicily and author of Syracuse, City of Legends: A Glory of Sicily. His professional career took him to Athens and Milan, where he lived and worked for many years. Now retired, he is a frequent visitor to Sicily.
Palermo – the capital of Sicily – is a destination with a difference. The city is a treasure trove of original monuments and works of art, combined with architecture of grand proportions. Yet it also has a grittier side, shown by the continuing influence of the mafia. Jeremy Dummett here provides a concise overview of Palermo’s long history, together with a survey of its most important monuments and sites. He looks at the influences of the city’s various ancient rulers – the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs and Normans – as well as its more recent incarnation as part of the Italian state. In addition to being an essential companion for visitors to Palermo, this book can be equally enjoyed as a standalone history of the city and its place at the heart of Sicily.
Syracuse, City of Legends A Glory of Sicily Jeremy Dummett
240 pages 31 b&w & colour illustrations, 12 maps approx. 80,000 words => History, Travel Rights available: World
Dubbed ‘the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all’ by Cicero, Syracuse also boasts the richest history of anywhere in Sicily. Syracuse, City of Legends - the first modern historical guide to the city - explores Syracuse’s place within the island and the wider Mediterranean and reveals why it continues to captivate visitors today, more than two and a half millennia after its foundation.
Jeremy Dummett is an expert on the history of Sicily and author of Palermo, City of Kings: The Heart of Sicily. His professional career took him to Athens and Milan, where he lived and worked for many years. Now retired, he is a frequent visitor to Sicily.
Over its long and colourful life, Syracuse has been home to many creative figures, including Archimedes, the greatest mathematician of the ancient world, as well as host to Plato, Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal, and Caravaggio, who have all contributed to the rich history and atmosphere of this beguiling and distinctive Sicilian city. Generously illustrated, Syracuse, City of Legends also offers detailed descriptions of the principal monuments from each period in the city’s life, explaining their physical location as well as their historical context. This vivid and engaging history weaves together the history, architecture and archaeology of Syracuse.
Evita The Life of Eva Perón Jill Hedges
272 pages 21 b&w illustrations approx. 100,000 words => History, Politics, Biography Rights available: World
Jill Hedges has been Senior Editor for Latin America at Oxford Analytica since 2001 and was formerly Editorial Manager of business information service Esmerk Argentina. She has a PhD in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool and is the author of Argentina: A Modern History.
Eva Perón remains Argentina’s best-known and most iconic personality, surpassing even sporting superstars such as Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi, and far outlasting her own husband, President Juan Domingo Perón - himself a remarkable and charismatic political leader without whom she, as an uneducated woman in an elitist and male-dominated society, could not have existed as a political figure. In this book, Jill Hedges tells the story of a remarkable woman whose glamour, charisma, political influence and controversial nature continue to generate huge amounts interest 60 years after her death. After their political breakthrough, her charitable work and magnetic personality earned her wide public acclaim and there was national mourning following her death from cancer at the age of just 33. Based on new sources and first-hand interviews, the book will seek to explore the personality and experiences of ‘Evita’ and the contemporary events that influenced her and were in turn influenced by her. This is an essential reading for anyone interested in modern Argentinean history and the cult of ‘Evita’.
Argentina A Modern History Jill Hedges
336 pages 16 b&w illustrations, 4 tables, 1 map approx. 118,000 words => History, Politics Rights available: World
Jill Hedges has been Senior Editor for Latin America at Oxford Analytica since 2001 and was formerly Editorial Manager of business information service Esmerk Argentina.
In the early 20th century, Argentina possessed one of the world’s most prosperous economies, yet since then Argentina has suffered a series of boom-and-bust cycles that have seen it fall well behind its regional neighbours. At the same time, despite the lack of significant ethnic or linguistic divisions, Argentina has failed to create an over-arching postindependence national identity and its political and social history has been marred by frictions, violence and a 50-year series of military coups d’état. In this book, Jill Hedges analyses the modern history of Argentina from the adoption of the 1853 constitution until the present day, exploring political, economic and social aspects of Argentina’s recent past in a study which will be invaluable for anyone interested in South American history and politics.
Frantz Faron The Militant Philosopher of Third World Revolution Leo Zeilig 256 pages 12 b&w illustrations approx. 90,000 words => History, Philosophy, African Studies, Biography Rights available: World Leo Zeilig is Visiting Researcher at University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He was previously a senior researcher at the Centre for Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg and holds a PhD from Brunel University.
Frantz Fanon is best known as one of the leading twentiethcentury political thinkers and activists against colonialism and imperialism and as the author of the iconic book ‘Wretched of the Earth’. Leo Zeilig here details the life of Fanon - from his upbringing in Martinique to his wartime experiences and work in Europe and North Africa - and frames his ideas and activism within the greater context of his career as a practising psychiatrist and his politically tumultuous surroundings. The book covers the period of the Algerian War of Independence, national liberation and what Fanon described ‘the curse of independence’. Highlighting Fanon’s role as the most influential theorist of third-world liberation, this book is an essential work for students, academics and general readers.
Casting off the Veil The Life of Huda Shaarawi, Egypt’s First Feminist Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi 320 pages 12 b&w illustrations approx. 100,000 words => History, Middle East, Biography, Feminism Rights sold: EG, FR, IT
Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi is a freelance interpreter, and has worked for international, regional and national organisations, including the Library of Alexandria, UNESCO and WHO.
In 1923, when the pioneer of feminist activism, Huda Shaarawi, removed her veil in Cairo’s train station, she created what became a landmark (and much-copied) gesture for feminists throughout Egypt and the Middle East and cemented her status as one of the most important feminists in twentieth-century Egypt. In Casting off the Veil, her granddaughter Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi uses never-before seen letters and photographs to explore the life and thought of Egypt’s first feminist, as she campaigned against British occupation, as well as striving to improve conditions for women throughout the country. From her birth into a wealthy and powerful family, her early years spent in a harem, to her iconic status as one of the most influential feminists in Middle Eastern history, this is a fascinating portrait of a determined and ground-breaking woman, a rich and important story which will captivate everyone with an interest in Egyptian, feminist or colonial history.
My Way A Muslim Woman’s Journey Mona Siddiqui
240 pages 8 colour illustrations approx. 80,000 words => Religion, Politics, Middle East, Philosophy Rights available: World Mona Siddiqui, OBE, is one of the UK’s leading commentators on religious affairs. Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, she has written many books, which include How to Read the Qur’an, The Good Muslim and Christians, Muslims and Jesus.
Polarized debates about ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ are now so ubiquitous that it is easy to forget how damaging they can be. The vast majority of Muslims do not wish to see Islam used as a divisive force within the largely secular societies in which they live. How then can Muslim stereotyping be challenged? Mona Siddiqui is one of the foremost Western authorities on the reconciliation of 21st-century life and Islamic custom. In this new and searching book, she applies a uniquely probing intelligence, as well as a female sensibility, to crucial issues of faith and identity (such as wearing the veil) within society at large. While speaking from within a particular tradition, she touches on matters of universal concern. Who are we? How do we cope with growing older? What kind of world will we leave to our children? Placing her rich personal journey in a wider context, the author is able to explore love and sex, multiculturalism and diversity, and ageing and death through the prism of her experience as both a Muslim and a modern woman. Her book shows why she is one of the most vital thinkers of our age.
Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam A History of Muslim Dreaming and Foreknowing Elizabeth Sirriyeh 256 pages approx. 80,000 words => Religion, Politics, Middle East, Philosophy Rights available: World
Elizabeth Sirriyeh is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Leeds. Her previous books include Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World and Sufism: A Guide for the Perplexed.
People in Western societies have long been interested in their dreams and what they mean. However, few non-Muslims in the West are likely to seek interpretation of those dreams to help them make life-changing decisions. In the Islamic world the situation is quite different. Dreaming and the import of visions are here of enormous significance, to the degree that many Muslims believe that in their dreams they are receiving divine guidance: for example, on whether or not to accept a marriage proposal, or a new job opportunity. In her authoritative new book, Elizabeth Sirriyeh offers the first concerted history of the rise of dream interpretation in Islamic culture, from medieval times to the present. Central to the book is the figure of the Prophet Muhammad - seen to represent for Muslims the perfect dreamer, visionary and interpreter of dreams. Less benignly, dreams have been exploited in the propaganda of Islamic militants in Afghanistan, and in apocalyptic visions relating to the 9/11 attacks. This timely volume gives an important, fascinating and overlooked subject the exploration it has long deserved.
Unbelievable Why We Believe and Why We Don’t Graham Ward
256 pages xx b&w illustrations approx. 85,000 words => Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Politics Rights sold:
Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. His books include Barthes, Derrida and the Language of Theology, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (edited with John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock), Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, Christ and Culture and Religion and Political Thought.
What am I to believe?' is perhaps the fundamental question of human existence. It is unlikely that most people reach the end of their lives without wondering what it has all been for and what happens next. But the question of belief is more than just academic, since what people believe is now more critical than ever. As G R Evans shows, an ignorance of the history of beliefs can leave individuals susceptible to the influence of extreme ideas, and unsure how to put them into context and judge their validity. In all religions, not just Islam and Christianity, that is precisely how sects and cults get a grip. This book shows how ethical questions fit together, and how great historical debates and decision-making - whether about religious conflict, or theodicy, or questions of authority - shed light on some of the great moral challenges facing the religions today. Concentrating especially on the Christian tradition, Evans shows how the history of religious debate can help us to understand the nature of current misunderstandings and divison over belief, a crucial step for people of all faiths in the new century.
First Light A History of Creation Myths from Gilgamesh to the God Particle Gill R. Evans 320 pages 20 b&w illustration approx. 80,000 words => Religion, History, Philosophy, Popular Science Rights available: World
Gill R. Evans is Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectural History in the University of Cambridge. The author of over 50 books, she is also general editor of the I.B.Tauris History of the Church.
Did the universe start with a bang, or has it existed always? Was there a supernatural being behind it all, or just mindless forces? The beginning of things has forever tested the limits of curiosity, and such questions have both challenged atheists and inspired believers. Ancient cultures resorted to myth and symbolism to tell vibrant stories about human origins. Later civilizations added philosophical and scientific explanations: but these are not definitive. The nature and meaning of existence - the 'why' as much as the 'how' questions - are in the end mysterious. In this lively and wide-ranging book, G R Evans explores the world's myriad creation stories against the background of the biggest question there is: what are we doing here? Discussing Swahili legends that resemble the Book of Genesis, Greek tales about the Titans, Native American, Inca and Mesopotamian mythologies, and Vedic creation cycles that begin with a cosmic egg or seed, the author surveys polytheist, monotheist and dualist ideas about supernatural power.
Confucianism An Introduction Ronnie Littlejohn
256 pages 20 b&w illustrations, 2 maps approx. 80,000 words => Religion, Philosophy, World History Rights available: CN Ronnie L. Littlejohn is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Studies at Belmont University, Tennessee. His previous books include Riding the Wind with Liezi: New Essays on the Daoist Classic, Chinese Philosophy: An Introduction and Daoism: An Introduction.
It is arguably Confucianism, not Communism, which lies at the core of China's deepest sense of self. It has defied eradication, remaining a fundamental part of the nation's soul for 2500 years. And now, as China assumes greater ascendancy on the world economic stage, it is making a strong comeback as a pragmatic philosophy of personal as well as corporate transformation, popular in home, boardroom and in current political discussion. What is this complex system of ideology that stems from the teachings of a remarkable man called Confucius (Kongzi), who lived in the distant sixth century BCE? Though he left no writings of his own, the oral teachings recorded by the founder's disciples in the 'Analects' left a profound mark on later Chinese politics and governance. In this this new, comprehensive introduction, Ronnie Littlejohn offers full coverage of the tradition's sometimes neglected metaphysics, as well as its varied manifestations in education, art, literature and culture.
Daoism An Introduction Ronnie L. Littlejohn
288 pages 20 b&w illustrations, 1 map approx. 85,000 words => Religion, Philosophy, World History Rights available: World
Ronnie L. Littlejohn is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Studies at Belmont University, Tennessee. His previous books include Riding the Wind with Liezi: New Essays on the Daoist Classic, Confucianism: An Introduction and Chinese Philosophy: An Introduction.
'The way that can be told is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal Name.' So begins the first verse of the mysterious Dao De Jing, foundation text of the ancient Chinese religion of Daoism. Often attributed to semi-mythical sage Laozi, the origins of this enigmatic document - which probably came into being in the third century BCE - are actually unknown. But the tenets of Daoism laid down in the Dao De Jing, and in later texts like the Yi Jing (or 'Book of Changes'), continue to exert considerable fascination, particularly in the West. In this fresh and engaging introduction to Daoism, Ronnie L. Littlejohn discusses the central facets of a tradition which can sometimes seem as elusive as the slippery notion of ‘Dao’ itself. The author shows that fundamental to Daoism is the notion of ‘Wu-wei’, or non-action: a paradoxical idea emphasising alignment of the self with the harmony of the universe, a universe in continual flux and change. By exploring the great subtleties of this ancient religion, Littlejohn traces its development and encounters with Buddhism; its expression in art and literature; its fight for survival during the Cultural Revolution; and its manifestations in modern-day China and beyond.
Chinese Philosophy An Introduction Ronnie L. Littlejohn
288 pages approx. 100,000 words => Religion, South Asian Studies, History of Ideas, Philosophy Rights available: World
Ronnie L. Littlejohn is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Studies at Belmont University, Tennessee. His previous books include Riding the Wind with Liezi: New Essays on the Daoist Classic, Confucianism: An Introduction and Daoism: An Introduction.
The philosophical traditions of China have arguably influenced more human beings than any other. China has been the home not only of its indigenous philosophical traditions of Confucianism and Daoism, but also of uniquely modified forms of Buddhism. As Ronnie L Littlejohn shows, these traditions have for thousands of years formed the bedrock of the longest continuing civilization on the planet; and Chinese philosophy has profoundly shaped the institutions, social practices and psychological character of East and Southeast Asia. The author here surveys the key texts and philosophical systems of Chinese thinkers in a completely original and illuminating way. Ranging from the Han dynasty to the present, he discusses the six classical schools of Chinese philosophy (Yin-Yang, Ru, Mo, Ming, Fa and Dao-De); the arrival of Buddhism in China and its distinctive development; the central figures and movements from the end of the Tang dynasty to the introduction into China of Western thought; and the impact of Chinese philosophers – ranging from Confucius and Laozi to Tu Weiming – on their equivalents in the West.
The Power of Tantra Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies Hugh B. Urban 264 pages 24 b&w illustration approx. 90,000 words => Religion, History, South Asian Studies Rights available: World
Hugh B. Urban is one of the leading western scholars of Tantric religion, and the author of several books which include Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religion and Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Bengal.
For most contemporary New Age and popular writers, Tantra is celebrated as a much-needed affirmation of physical pleasure and sex: indeed as a 'cult of ecstasy' to counter the perceived hypocritical prudery of many Westerners. In recent years, Tantra has become the focus of a still larger cultural and political debate. In the eyes of many Hindus, much of the western literature on Tantra represents a form of neo-colonialism, which continues to portray India as an exotic, erotic, hyper-sexualised Orient. Which, then, is the 'real' Tantra? Focusing on one of the oldest and most important Tantric traditions, based in Assam, northeast India, Hugh B. Urban shows that Tantra is less about optimal sexual pleasure than about harnessing the divine power of the goddess that flows alike through the cosmos, the human body and political society. In a fresh and vital contribution to the field, the author suggests that the 'real' meaning of Tantra lies in helping us rethink not just the history of Indian religions, but also our own modern obsessions with power, sex and the invidious legacies of cultural imperialism.
The Church in the Early Modern Age The I.B. Tauris History of the Christian Church C. Scott Dixon 288 pages 1 map approx. 90,000 words => Religion, Cultural Studies Rights available: World
C. Scott Dixon is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen s University, Belfast. His previous books include The Reformation and Rural Society; The Reformation in Germany (with R W Scribner); Protestants: A History from Wittenburg to Pennsylvania, 1517-1740 and Contesting the Reformation.
The years 1450-1650 were a momentous period for the development of Christianity. They witnessed the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation: perhaps the most important era for the shaping of the faith since its foundation. C. Scott Dixon explores how the ideas that went into the making of early modern Christianity re-oriented the Church to such an extent that they gave rise to new versions of the religion. Tracing these changes from the fall of Constantinople to the end of the Thirty Years' War, and treating the High Renaissance and the Reformation as part of the same overall narrative, the author offers an integrated approach to widely different national, social and cultural histories. Moving beyond Protestant and Catholic conflicts, he contrasts Western Christianity with Eastern Orthodoxy, and examines the Church's response to fears of Ottoman domination.
Popes, Cardinals and Wars The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe D. S. Chambers 256 pages 20 b&w illustrations approx. 90,000 words => History, Religion Rights sold: ES
D.S.Chambers, who was a pupil of the late J.R. Hale, began research in Italy and the Vatican in the late 1950s and has since spent much time in Italy. He has published extensively on subjects relating to the Italian Renaissance, but in particular concerning cardinals, and the cities of Rome, Venice and Mantua.
Can Christian clergy – supposedly men of peace – also be warriors? In this lively and compelling history D.S. Chambers examines popes and cardinals over several centuries who not only preached war but also put it into practice as military leaders. Satirised by Erasmus, the most notorious - Julius II - was even refused entrance to heaven because he was ‘bristling and clanking with bloodstained armour’. Engaging and stimulating, and using references to scripture and canon law as well as a large range of historical sources, Popes, Cardinals and War throws light on these extraordinary and paradoxical figures – men who were peaceful by vocation but contributed to the process of war with surprising directness and brutality– as well as illuminating many aspects of the political history of the Church.
The Three Sons of Abrahams Interfaith Encounters Between Judaism, Christianity and Islam Jacques B. Doukhan 256 pages approx. 70,000 words => Religion, Politics, Philosophy, Biblical Studies Rights available: World
Jacques B. Doukhan is Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, and the Director of the Institute of Jewish-Christian Studies, at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. His books include Hebrew for Theologians: A Textbook for the Study of Biblical Hebrew in Relation to Hebrew Thinking and Israel and the Church: Two Voices
Christianity, Judaism and Islam have sometimes been more closely identified not for what they offer to save the world but for what they bring to destabilise it. It is one of the depressing paradoxes of religion, supposedly a force for good, that it is all too frequently the occasion for conflict instead of peace, generosity and better treatment of one’s neighbour. The contributors to this volume start from the premise that there is a price to be paid by the ‘sons of Abraham’: whether Jews, Muslims or Christians. And that is the cost of learning how to be brothers through mutual and attentive engagement. Mature interfaith discussion offers respect for a shared heritage while also recognising points of distinctiveness. This book explores what articulating such regardful difference, as well as commonality, might mean for the future of faith relations. Including provocative reflections by Elie Wiesel, Irving Greenberg, Hans Küng and others, the book makes a vital contribution to dialogue. In its searching analysis of issues of
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The History of Central Asia The ambitious four-volume study of Central Asia Christoph Baumer is a leading explorer and historian of Central Asia, Tibet and China. He has written several well-received books in the fields of history, religion, archaeology and travel, including The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity, Traces in the Desert: Journeys of Discovery across Central Asia and China’s Holy Mountain: An Illustrated Journey into the Heart of Buddhism, all published by I.B.Tauris.
Volume 1: The Age of the Steppe Warriors 384 pages 262 colour illustrations
Volume 2: The Age of the Silk Roads 408 pages 266 colour illustrations Pub date: August 2018
Volume 3: The Age of Islam and the Mongols 392 pages 266 colour illustrations, 11 maps
Volume 4: The Age of Decline and Revival
Architecture Art Media Culture
Dressing for Austerity Aspiration, Leisure and Fashion in Post-War Britain Geraldine Biddle-Perry
Geraldine Biddle-Perry is a fashion and cultural historian who lectures in fashion and design history & theory at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She is co-author, with Sarah Cheang, of Hair: Styling Culture and Fashion.
March 2017 256 pages 36 b&w illustrations Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => Social & Cultural History, Fashion & Design
Radical reassessment of British society's response to post-war Austerity
Brings together political history, real people, fashion & design
Author distinguished cultural & fashion historian
A new look for Austerity... The coldest winter on record, rationing, successive economic crises, bombed out towns and cities; with some justification ‘Austerity Britain’ in the late 1940s is coloured in the popular imagination in tones of drab. Dressing for Austerity shines a light on alternative visions of post-war optimism and aspiration. It traces how, set against the Labour government's philosophy of 'Austerity by design' in a climate of post-war idealism, the desire for affordable fashionable clothing, access to leisure, and the health, time and money to enjoy them became totemic symbols of post-war ambition that impelled new strategies of state control and consumer agency. The book examines the immediate post-war period – its politics, its fashions and its people - in new ways and on its own terms as a critical tipping point in the making of modern Britain.
Rebuilding Babel Modern Architecture and Internationalism Mark Crinson Mark Crinson is Professor of Art History at Birkbeck, University of London. He is a board member of ABE Journal (Architecture Beyond Europe) and also vice-president of the European Architectural History Network. His previous books include Stirling and Gowan: Architecture from Austerity to Affluence (2012; winner of the Historians of British Art Prize, 2014) and Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (2003; winner of the Spiro Kostof Prize, 2006).
May 2017 320 pages 54 b&w illustrations & 8pp. colour plates Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => Architecture, History
A book crafted for students and scholars of architecture and art theory, as well as for those interested in the history of twentieth-century optimism about the world and its architecture
Internationalism influenced nearly all modern architecture, but there is no book yet on this subject.
A revisionist history of the modernist architectural movement, which encapsulated internationalist politics and ideals in the inter-war years and beyond. The ‘International Style’ of architecture was one manifestation of this new political thinking, but Crinson shows how the aims of modernist architecture frequently engaged with the substance of an internationalist mindset in addition to sharing surface similarities. Bringing together the visionaries of internationalist projects - including Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, Berthold Lubetkin, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe – Crinson interweaves ideas of evolution, ecology, utopia, regionalism, socialism, free trade, and anticolonialism to reveal the possibilities heralded by modernist architecture. Furthermore, he reconnects pivotal figures in architecture with a cast of polymath internationalists such as Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Julian Huxley, Rabindranath Tagore and H. G. Wells, to provide a richly detailed socio-cultural framework.
The Dead City Urban Ruins and the Spectacle of Decay Paul Dobraszczyk Paul Dobraszczyk’s is a visiting lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His research focuses on visual culture and the built environment from the 19th century onwards. He is co-editor of Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within (2016) and Function & Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century (2016), as well as author of Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain (2014) and London’s Sewers (2014).
June 2017 272 pages 60 b&w & colour illustrations Approx. 90,000 words World rights available => Urban Studies, Art History, Visual Culture
Informed by first-hand visits to many of the sites: part of "dark tourism"
Blends visual culture and urban studies to reveal the rich meaning and political potential behind imagining our cities
Written in an engaging style that will appear to specialists and nonspecialists
Cities are imagined not just as utopias, but also as ruins. In literature, film, art and popular culture, urban landscapes have been submerged by floods, razed by alien invaders, abandoned by fearful inhabitants and consumed in fire. The Dead City unearths meanings from such depictions of ruination and decay, looking at representations of both thriving cities and ones which are struggling, abandoned or simply in transition. It reveals that ruination presents a complex opportunity to envision new futures for a city, whether that is by rewriting its past or throwing off old assumptions and proposing radical change. Seen in a certain light, for example, urban ruin and decay are a challenge to capitalist narratives of unbounded progress. They can equally imply that power structures thought to be deeply ingrained are temporary, contingent and even fragile. Examining ruins in Chernobyl, Detroit, London, Manchester and Varosha, this book demonstrates that how we discuss and depict urban decline is intimately connected to the histories, economic forces, power structures and communities of a given city, as well as to conflicting visions for its future.
Feminism and Art History Now Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice Victoria Horne, Laura Perry (Eds)
June 2017 288 pages 35 b&w illustrations Approx. 85,000 words World rights available => Contemporary Art, Gender Studies
Introductory essay that surveys feminist art history over the last 50 years & will act as an invaluable resource for students and researchers alike
Tackles issues in curatorial and museum studies as well as art history – broad spectrum of international case studies
Victoria Horne is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art and teaches courses on contemporary art at the University of Edinburgh. In 2012, she established the Writing Feminist Art Histories research initiative. Lara Perry is the Academic Programme Leader for History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. She is the author of History’s Beauties: Women and the National Portrait Gallery, 1856 – 1900 (2006) and co-editor of Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions (2013). … Four decades of feminist art history have prompted a radical rethinking of the discipline. This volume asks how feminism’s interventions and propositions are relevant to contemporary scholarship today. To what extent have developments in global politics, artworld institutions, and local cultures reshaped the critical directions of feminist art historians? The significant new research gathered here engages with the rich inheritance of feminist historiography since around 1970, and considers how to maintain the forcefulness of its critique while addressing contemporary political struggles. The book presents new research on a diversity of topics that span political movements in Italy, urban gentrification in New York, community art projects in Scotland and Canada’s contemporary indigenous culture. Individual chapter analyses focus on the art of Lee Krasner, The Emily Davison Lodge, Zoe Leonard, Martha Rosler, Carla Lonzi and Womanhouse. Together with a synthesising introductory essay, these studies provide readers with a view of feminist art histories of the past, present and future.
The Jazz War Nazism and the Struggle for the Airwaves in World War II Will Studdert
Will Studdert completed his PhD at the University of Kent, where he was supervised by Professor David Welch and Professor Ulf Schmidt and externally examined by Jeffrey Richards.
August 2017 224 pages Approx. 100,000 words World rights available => Media & Culture, History, World War II,
Strong contribution to our understanding of Nazi propaganda
Research is based around the superb and largely unheard oral testimony of the players of ‘Charlie and his Orchestra‘
Contemporary testimony of the effect of jazz and swing on soldiers, civilians and propaganda makers
A superb history of World War II.
World War II saw both sides sinking huge amounts of money and effort into the propaganda war. Radio was by far the most popular media, and both the BBC and Goebbels’ German equivalent (the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment) could be heard in both Germany and England. The radio output of the combatants was overwhelmingly jazzbased and music was the hook through which to deliver the message of cultural superiority and imminent victory. Here the Nazi’s had a major problem. Despite Germany’s rich jazz scene of the twenties and thirties, the music was considered to display ‘negro rhythm’ and ‘Jewish characteristics’ which were unacceptable to Hitler. The music was considered irresistible, and thus begins on of the key stories of this book: Goebbels’ bizarre efforts to fake an indigenously German jazz band, which were called, for the benefit of British and American listeners, ‘Charlie and his Orchestra’. They were to play a more acceptable version of swing music which Goebbels christened, with characteristic flair, ‘New German Entertainment Music’. Studdart’s research reveals how Goebbels’ henchman Hans Hinkel attempted to launch a Nazi jazz label to control the releases of Louis Armstrong and others in occupied Europe, and how he was regularly pelted with fruit by Nazi soldiers when he prevented the playing of jazz at ‘entertaining the troops’ rallies.
Craft on Demand The New Politics of the Handmade Anthea Black, Nicole Burisch (Eds) Anthea Black is an artist and cultural worker based in Toronto, Canada. She has exhibited in Canada, the US, Norway and The Netherlands and curated exhibitions No Place: Queer Geographies on Screen and PLEASURE CRAFT. Nicole Burisch is a critic and curator based in Montreal, Canada. She has worked with organizations such as Mentoring Artists for Women's Art, Artexte, and Centre des arts actuels Skol and was a 2014-2016 Core Fellow Critic-inResidence with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.since 2005.
November 2017 304 pages 32 b&w illustrations Approx. 90,000 words World rights available => Fashion
Radical critique of craft politics in the global economy
Original chapters from writers and makers
For all engaged in studying and making crafts
Making the new politics of craft and sustainability.
The handmade has become inseparable from capitalist modes of production and consumption and this change demands new understandings of objects, aesthetics and labour. Craft on Demand examines the role of the handmade in contemporary art, craft and design as part of a dramatically shifting global economy. New writing and artists projects by international scholars and practitioners explore the politics of scarcity, hoarding and sustainability, craftivism and ‘ethical’ consumption, urban space and new technologies, race, cultural heritage and sovereignty. Engaging with craft, art, design students and practitioners who want a radical rethink of the politics and economics of the handmade, they claim craft as a dynamic critical field for thinking through the most immediate issues of our time.
Death in the Desert The Complete Guide to Spaghetti Westerns Howard Hughes Howard Hughes is a film writer and historian. His books on popular film genres include Aim for the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood and in his Filmgoers’ Guide series for I.B. Tauris, From Stagecoach to Tombstone, Once Upon a Time in the Italian West, Crime Wave, When Eagles Dared and Outer Limits: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Sci-Fi Films. He is contributor to The James Bond Archives, the official fiftieth anniversary celebration of 007.
November 2017 400 pages 45 b&w illustrations Approx. 200,000 words World rights available => Cinema History, Visual Culture
Definitive complete guide to European Spaghetti Westerns covering over 500 films
Howard Hughes is the international expert on the genre
Illustrated with rare posters and stills
European westerns, the featuring over 500 films .
unabridged
story,
Instantly recognisable from their music and visual style, spaghetti westerns are a magnificently popular cult film genre. Through home media, they’ve stayed alive and available to an avid audience, enjoying remarkable influence and lasting success. In over 500 detailed film reviews covering 20 years of westerns in Europe, genre expert Howard Hughes takes a fascinating snapshot of European western films and filmmaking during their frenzied, popular heyday. He narrates the spaghetti western story from the genre’s early, tentative days to its explosive golden era following the success of A Fistful of Dollars and the massproduced scramble of films that swamped cinemas in the late 1960s, before the gradual falling off of enchantment with the genre. Death in the Desert also looks at other westerns made in Europe in the 1960s and ‘70s: the early West German ‘Winnetou’ westerns, swashbuckling Spanish ‘Zorro’ movies, kung-fu westerns, German musical and comedy westerns, American and British westerns filmed in Spain, and the then East Germany. This essential read for cinephiles, collectors and completists, is fully illustrated with rare posters and stills.
Positive Images Gay Men and HIV/AIDS in the Popular Culture of ‘Post Crisis’ Dion Kagan Dion Kagan is an early career academic and arts writer who works on film, theatre, sex and popular culture. He lectures in gender, sexuality, screen and cultural studies at Melbourne University, and at the Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health and Society, at LaTrobe University.
November 2017 272 pages 35 b&w illustrations Approx. 80,000 words World rights available => Gay Studies, Media & Culture
Uses wide range of examples from crisis period to now
Draws on gender & cultural studies theories and highly relevant to students of this discipline
The first book to explore legacy of HIV/AIDS in popular culture. A tidal wave of panic surrounded homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, during what was commonly termed ‘The AIDS Crisis’. Since the advent of antiretroviral drugs, however, the connotations of HIV/AIDS have changed: having the virus no longer means certain death. But while these life saving drugs mean that gay men can have a potentially healthy, normal life, what do these changes mean for how they and HIV is presented in popular culture? Positive Images is the first examination of the various methods used to portray gay men and HIV in the media over the past two decades. From Queer As Folk to Dallas Buyer’s Club and The Normal Heart, Dion Kagan explores film, documentaries, news coverage and pornography across the English-speaking world and exposes the socio-cultural foundations upon which those twenty years were based. His analyses provide acute insights into the fraught legacy of the AIDS Crisis and its continued impact upon the modern gay consciousness.
Engaged Urbanism Cities and Methodologies Ben Campkin and Ger Duijzings (Eds)
302 pages b&w & colour illustrations approx. 70,000 words => Architecture, Cities, Urban Geography Rights available: World
Ben Campkin is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and Director of UCL’s Urban Laboratory. He is the author of Remaking London: Decline and Regeneration in Urban Culture, which received the 2015 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Foundation Book Award.
How can we understand the variety and dynamism of contemporary cities and urban experience across the globe? Engaged Urbanism showcases the exciting ways in which urbanists are responding to this question and working towards fairer cities. Its authors offer succinct, candid and carefully illustrated commentaries on the trials and successes of risktaking research, revealing how they collaborate across fields of expertise, inventing or adapting methods to suit bespoke situations. Featuring novel uses and combinations of practice – from activism, architectural design and undercover journalism, to film, sculpture, performance and photography – in a diversity of cities such as Beirut, Johannesburg, Kisumu, London and Rio de Janeiro, Engaged Urbanism demonstrates how some of the greatest challenges for present and future populations are being rigorously and creatively addressed
Sustainable Cities Assessing the Performance and Practice of Urban Environments Pierre Laconte and Chris Gossop (Eds) 256 pages 72 b&w & 8pp colour illustrations approx. 68,000 words => Architecture & Urbanism Rights available: World
Pierre Laconte is President of the Foundation for the Urban Environment. He was a partner of Groupe Urbanisme-Architecture, the organisation responsible for the planning and implementation of the new university town of Louvain-laNeuve, near Brussels. He is the editor of Changing Cities: Challenge to Planning. Chris Gossop is a town planner and environmentalist.
With more than half the global population now living in urban areas, one of the key issues confronting us today is how we make our growing cities sustainable. Sustainable Cities offers valuable new insights for addressing this vital challenge. Part I examines the built environment at three levels of observation – individual buildings, urban neighbourhoods and entire cities and towns. While charting the genuine improvements made, it also reveals the scale and complexity of the task ahead. Part II offers a critical assessment of the techniques used to assess urban development, including the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions, ecological footprint analysis, and the assessment of urban biodiversity. It concludes with an alternative approach to CO2, making the case for this greenhouse gas to be seen as a resource, rather than as a liability. The final part presents cases of best practice from the UK and Europe.
Antipolitics in Central European Art Reticence as Dissidence Under PostTotalitarian Rule 1956-1989 Klara Kemp-Welch 360 pages 133 b&w illustrations approx. 107,300 words => Visual Culture, International Relations Rights available: World
Klara Kemp-Welch is Lecturer in 20th Century Modernism at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She is coeditor of a special issue of ArtMargins devoted to Artists’ Networks in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and author of book chapters and catalogue essays on Central and Eastern European postwar art.
Art historians have tended to frame late-socialist Central European art as either ‘totalitarian’ or ‘transitional’. This bold new book challenges this established viewpoint, contending that the artists of this era cannot be simply caricatured as dissident heroes, or easily subsumed into the formalist Western canon. Klara Kemp-Welch offers a compelling account of the ways in which artists in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary embraced alternative forms of action-based practice just as their dissident counterparts were formulating alternative models of politics - in particular, an ‘antipolitics’ of self-organisation by society. In doing so, she makes a case for the moral and political coherence of Central European art, theory and oppositional activism in the late-socialist period, arguing for the region’s centrality to late20th century intellectual and cultural history.
Participation in Art and Architecture Spaces of Interaction and Occupation Martino Stierli, Mechtild Widrich
344 pages 72 b&w illustrations approx. 130,000 words => Art & Architectural History, Rights available: World
Martino Stierli is Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Mechtild Widrich is Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
If participation has been an ideal in politics since ancient democracy, in art it became central only with the avant-gardes emerging from WWI and the Russian Revolution. Politics and aesthetics are still catching up with each other. In the 21st Century, since the revolutionary unrest of the 1960s, participation in art and architecture has lost its utopian glow and become the focus of a fierce debate: does ‘participatory’ art and architecture shape social reality, or is it shaped by it? Contemporary critics see in participation only technocratic control, while others embrace it as a viable politics in an era of global capitalism. This volume breaks the impasse by looking at how participants themselves exert power, rather than being victimized or liberated from it. From artists hijacking Google Earth to protesters setting up a museum of the revolution in Cairo, art, architecture, and daily life are explored in their participatory dimension.
Art as Organism Biology and Evolution of the Digital Image Charissa N. Terranova
336 pages 82 b&w illustrations approx. 114,000 words => Visual Culture, Rights available: World
Charissa N. Terranova is Associate Professor of Aesthetic Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. She is the author of Automotive Prosthetic (2014) and has published articles in Leonardo, Art Journal, Urban History Review and Journal of Urban History, among others.
‘Play art’ or interactive art is becoming a central concept in the contemporary art world, disrupting the traditional role of passive observance usually assumed by audiences, allowing them active participation. The work of ‘play’ artists - from Carsten Höller’s ‘Test Site’ at the Tate Modern to Gabriel Orozco’s ‘Ping Pond Table’ - must be touched, influenced and experienced; the gallery-goer is no longer a spectator but a cocreator. Time to Play explores the role of play as a central but neglected concept in aesthetics and a model for ground-breaking modern and postmodern experiments which have tended to blur the boundary between art and life. Moving freely between disciplines, Katarzyna Zimna links the theory and history of 20th and 21st century art with ideas developed within play, game and leisure studies, and the philosophical theories of Kant, Gadamer and Derrida, to critically engage with current discussion on the role of the artist, viewers, curators and their spaces of encounter.
Time to Play Action and Interaction in Comtemporary Art Katarzyna Zimna
224 pages 8 b&w illustrations approx. 85,000 words => Visual Culture, Art Theory Rights available: World
Katarzyna Zimna is an independent artist, researcher and book illustrator based in London and Lodz, Poland. Her work has featured in exhibitions across Europe.
‘Play art’ or interactive art is becoming a central concept in the contemporary art world, disrupting the traditional role of passive observance usually assumed by audiences, allowing them active participation. The work of ‘play’ artists - from Carsten Höller’s ‘Test Site’ at the Tate Modern to Gabriel Orozco’s ‘Ping Pond Table’ - must be touched, influenced and experienced; the gallery-goer is no longer a spectator but a cocreator. Time to Play explores the role of play as a central but neglected concept in aesthetics and a model for ground-breaking modern and postmodern experiments which have tended to blur the boundary between art and life. Moving freely between disciplines, Katarzyna Zimna links the theory and history of 20th and 21st century art with ideas developed within play, game and leisure studies, and the philosophical theories of Kant, Gadamer and Derrida, to critically engage with current discussion on the role of the artist, viewers, curators and their spaces of encounter.
The Delirious Museum A Journey from the Louvre to Las Vegas Calum Storrie
256 pages 30 b&w illustrations approx. 70,000 words => Architecture, Museum & Cultural Studies Rights sold: IT
Calum Storrie is an architect, curator and exhibition designer, who has worked with the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery among others. He has written extensively on the meanings of the museum.
The Delirious Museum gives a new interpretation of the relationship between the museum and the city in the 21st century. It presents an original view of the idea of the museum, proposing that it is, or should be, both a repository of the artefacts of the past and a continuation of the city street in the present. Storrie re-views our experience of the city and of the museum taking a journey that begins in the Louvre and continues through Paris, London, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, reimagining the possibilities for museums and their displays and re -examining the blurred boundaries between museums and the cities around them. On his quest for The Delirious Museum he takes the reader on a stimulating journey through cities and museums worldwide. Serious general readers interested in urban culture, design and architecture, as well as professional architects, cultural studies and museology academics will enjoy the book, which is well illustrated in black and white.
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This is Not Art Activism and Other “Not-Art” Alana Jelinek
192 pages b&w illustrations approx. 50,000 words => Art Theory & History, Political Activism Rights available: World
Alana Jelinek is AHRC fellow at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
Art is not political action. Art is not education. Art does not exist to make the world a better place. Art disrupts and resists the status quo and if it fails in this prime objective it only serves to deaden a disenfranchised society further. Alana Jelinek returns to the question ‘what is art?’, retelling the history of art practice and exposing the ways in which neoliberal norms and values have seeped into every aspect of our lives. From the author’s unique perspective as a practicing artist and theoretician, This Is Not Art offers a new way of understanding and practicing art - as the embodiment of power and agency within us, the possibility of thinking and acting differently, of finding new stories to tell.
Dressed for War Uniform, Civilian Clothing and Trappings, 1914-1918 Nina Edwards 240 pages 43 b&w & 8pp colour illustrations approx. 60,000 words => Visual Culture, Fashion, Cultural History Rights available: World
Nina Edwards is a writer and cultural critic, whose books include On the Button: The Significance of an Ordinary Item (I.B.Tauris) and Offal: A Global History.
Men in khaki and grey squatting in the trenches, women at work, gender bending in goggles, with overalls on over their trousers. What people wear matters. Well illustrated, this book tells the stories of what people on both sides wore on the front line and on the home front through the seismic years of World War I. Nina Edwards reveals fresh aspects of the war through the prism of the smallest details of personal dress, of clothes, hair and accessories, both in uniform and civilian wear. She explores how, during a period of extraordinary upheaval and rapid change, wearing a certain perfume, say, or the just-so adjustment to the tilt of a hat offer insights into the individual experience of men, women and children during the course of World War I.
On the Button The Significance of an Ordinary Item Nina Edwards
288 pages 52 b&w & 8pp colour illustrations approx. 70,000 words => Visual Culture, Fashion, Cultural History Rights available: World
Nina Edwards is a writer and cultural critic, whose books include Dressed for War: Uniform, Civilian Clothing and Trappings (I.B.Tauris) and Offal: A Global History.
What do you use every day that is small and large, worthless and beyond price? It's easily found in the gutter, yet you may never be able to replace it. You are always losing it but it faithfully protects you; sexy and uptight, it is knitted in to your affections or it may give you nightmares. It has led to conflict, fostered and repressed political and religious change and epitomizes the great aesthetic movements. It's Eurocentric, and is found all over the world. On the Button is an inventive and unusual exploration of the cultural history of the button, illustrated with a multiplicity of buttons in black and white and colour. It tells tales of a huge variety of the button's forms and functions, its sometimes uncompromising glamour, its stronghold in fashion and literature, its place in the visual arts, its association with crime and death, its tender call to nostalgia and the sentimental. There have been works addressed to the button collector and general cultural histories. On the Button links the two, revealing why we are so attracted to buttons, and how they punch way above their weight.
Adorned in Dreams Fashion and Modernity Elizabeth Wilson
344 pages b&w & colour illustrations approx. 90,000 words => Fashion, Cultural Studies Rights sold: IT, RU
Elizabeth Wilson is Emeritus Professor at London Metropolitan University and also teaches at the Architectural Association, the London Institute and Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her books include Bohemians, Hallucinations: Life in the Post-modern City and The Sphinx in the City.
When Adorned in Dreams was first published in 1985, Angela Carter described the book as ‘the best I have read on the subject, bar none’. From haute-couture to haberdashery, ‘deviant’ dress to Dior, Elizabeth Wilson traces the social history of fashion and its complex relationship to modernity. She also discusses fashion’s vociferous opponents, from the ‘dress reform’ movement to certain strands of feminism. Wilson delights in the power of fashion to mark out identity or to subvert it and this brand new edition traces recent developments to bring the story of fashionable dress - and its enormous cultural impact – bang up to date.
Being Gorgeous Feminism, Sexuality and the Pleasures of the Visual Jacki Willson 240 pages 25 b&w & colour illustrations approx. 60,000 words => Visual Culture, Fashion, Cultural History Rights available: World
Jacki Willson is a Cultural Studies Lecturer for Fashion, Textiles and Jewellery students at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She is the author of The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque (I.B.Tauris).
Being Gorgeous explores the ways in which extravagance, flamboyance and dressing up can open up possibilities for women to play around anarchically with familiar stereotypical tropes of femininity. This is protest through play – a pleasurable misbehaviour that reflects a feminism for the twenty-first century. Jacki Willson discusses how, whether through pastiche, parody, or pure pleasure, artists, artistes and indeed the spectators themselves can operate in excess of the restrictive images which saturate our visual culture. By referring to a wide spectrum of examples, including Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Matthew Barney, Dr Sketchy’s, Audacity Chutzpah, Burly Q and Carnesky’s Ghost Train, Being Gorgeous demonstrates how contemporary female performers embody, critique and thoroughly relish their own representation by inappropriately re-appropriating femininity.
Art and… Art and… is a series of intelligently written and highly readable illustrated books for the gallery-goer and students. The series takes as its starting points both that art matters—that it has a real and important connection to the world in which we live—and that contemporary art, sometimes difficult or unapproachable, need not equate to difficult writing. In selecting themes, we have aligned art with those perennial issues such as sex and war wich trouble generation after generation, as well as those specifically contemporary issues—recent scientific advances and advertising for example—to show how art both reflects and influences the wider world.
Contemporary Thinkers Reframed Are you baffled by Baudrillard? Dazed by Deleuze? Confused by Kristeva? Other guides can feel as impenetrable as the original texts to those who ‘think in images’. Contemporary Thinkers Reframed instead uses the language of the arts to explore the usefulness in practice of complex ideas. Short, contemporary and accessible, these lively books utilize actual examples of artworks, films, televisions shows, works or architecture, fashion and even computer games to explain and explore the work of the most commonly taught thinkers. Conceived specifically for the visually minded, the series will prove invaluable to students right across the visual arts.
Rights sold: TR
Rights sold: CN
Rights sold: TR
Rights sold: CN, TR
Rights sold: CN, TR
Rights sold: CN, TR