History from The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery

On a late September day in 480 B.C., Greek warships faced an invading Persian armada in the narrow Salamis Straits in the most important naval battle of the ancient world. Overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Greeks triumphed through a combination of strategy and deception. More than two millennia after it occurred, the clash between the Greeks and Persians at… Read more about this item

Romance and Reason, the lavishly illustrated catalogue accompanying the exhibition of the same name at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, explores the breadth and depth of Islamic engagement with ancient Greek thought. Drawing on manuscripts and artifacts from the collections of the National Library of Israel and prominent American institutions, the catalogue's essays focus… Read more about this item

This volume, the final of three, focuses on the inscribed stones and stone sculptures of North Wales crafted between 400 and 1150 AD. It provides fresh insights and new interpretations of over 150 monuments, many of which have been discovered since V. E. Nash-Williams's Early Christian Monuments of Wales was published in 1950. It includes an introductory discussion of the… Read more about this item

Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-to-date atlas on this 350-year history of kidnapping and coercion. It features nearly 200 maps, especially created for the volume, that explore every detail of… Read more about this item

Shows how U.S. Central American policies implement broader US economic, military, and social aims even while describing their impact on the lives of people in Central America.

In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this… Read more about this item

On a cold day in December 1667 the renegade physician Jean Denis transfused ten ounces of calf's blood into Antoine Mauroy, a madman. Several days and several transfusions later, Mauroy was dead and Denis was framed for murder. A riveting and wide-reaching history, Blood Workshows how blood transfusion became swept up in personal vendettas, international intrigues, and the war between… Read more about this item

In February of 1917 Russia was a backwards, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world's first workers' state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? In a panoramic sweep, stretching from St. Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages… Read more about this item

The author of acclaimed biographies of Emile Zola and Flaubert now offers an ambitious, far-reaching portrait of fin-de-siecle France.

James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. In the era of Trump, what can we learn from his struggle?

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's — Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to… Read more about this item

The French Revolution is a time of history made familiar from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and Tolstoy, as well as the legends of let them eat cake, and tricolours. Beginning in 1789, this period of extreme political and social unrest saw the end of the French monarchy, the death of an extraordinary number of people beneath the guillotine's blade during the… Read more about this item

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious… Read more about this item

The history of punishment and torture makes for macabre and mesmerizing reading: retribution without mercy, medieval justice, hellish prisons, and ingenious methods of inflicting torment upon the body and mind. Trace a path from the days of harshest penalties to more modern methods of reforming wrongdoers. Images graphically capture the plight of prisoners forced to walk treadmills till they went… Read more about this item

January 1945: the outcome of World War II has been determined. The Third Reich is in free fall as the Russians close in from the east. Berlin plans an eleventh-hour exodus for the German civilians trapped in the Red Armys way. More than 10,000 women, children, sick, and elderly pack aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former cruise ship. Soon after… Read more about this item

Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin nurtured anarchism in Italy, making it the dominant expression of socialism—triumphant over Marxism and all other revolutionary doctrines. From the First International to the 1872 Anti-Authoritarian International, from government suppression and anarchist insurrection to Errico Malatesta's prominent role in resurrecting the anarchist movement, Nunzio Pernicone's original research provides a critical examination of early anarchist practices.

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of… Read more about this item

This book covers the whole of English cultural history from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day -- from the Venerable Bede through English myths such as the legends about King Arthur and Albion to C.S. Lewis; from Chaucer through Spencer to George Eliot; from the English mystics through the philosopher Locke to Iris Murdoch; from Purcell through Elgar to… Read more about this item

For the authorities in medieval Europe, dissent struck at the roots of an ordered, settled world. It was to be crushed - initially by reason and argument, eventually by torture. Jeffrey Richards examines the wretched lives of heretics, witches, Jews, lepers and homosexuals and uncovers a common motive for their persecution: sexual aberrance.

The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period--one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking… Read more about this item