Adding new depth to our understanding of early New England society, this riveting account of Thomas Morton explores the tensions that arose from competing colonial visions. A lawyer and fur trader, Thomas Morton dreamed of a society where Algonquian...

Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society" – one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France...

The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Chris...

The last work of Abraham Lincoln's law of war expert Francis Lieber was long considered lost – until Will Smiley and John Fabian Witt discovered it in the National Archives. Lieber's manuscript on emergency powers and martial law addresses important...

Francis Spufford's welcome first volume of collected essays gathers an array of his compelling writings from the 1990s to the present. He makes use of a variety of encounters with particular places, writers, or books to address deeper questions relat...

While the American Revolution led to domestic peace and liberty, it ultimately had a catastrophic global impact – it strengthened the British Empire and led to widespread persecution and duress. From the opium wars in China to anti-imperial rebellion...

The ruler of a totalitarian state seeks validation from a former schoolmate, now the nation's foremost thinker, in order to access a cultural cache alien to his regime. A literary critic provides commentary on an unfinished poem that both foretells...

The first scholarly work to trace the Temple throughout the entire New Testament, this study examines Jewish and Christian attitudes toward the Temple in the first century and provides both Jews and Christians with a better understanding of their res...

A romantic description of the second law of thermodynamics is that the universe becomes increasingly disordered. But what does that actually mean? Starting with an overview of the three laws of thermodynamics, MacArthur "genius grant" winner R. Steph...

A fierce critique of civil religion as the taproot of America's bid for global hegemony Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that "God is on our side" has inspired U.S. f...