William the Conqueror's victory in 1066 was the beginning of a period of major transformation for medieval English aristocrats. In this groundbreaking book, David Crouch examines for the first time the fate of the English aristocracy between the reig...

With a language disappearing every two weeks and neologisms springing up almost daily, an understanding of the origins and currency of language has never seemed more relevant. In this charming volume, a narrative history written explicitly for a youn...

Europe is, in world terms, a relatively minor peninsula attached to the Eurasian land mass, yet it became one of the most innovative regions on the planet, bearing restless adventurers who traversed the globe to trade and often to settle. By the fift...

In the first decades of the 20th century, painters of the Ashcan School, a loosely connected group of gritty, urban realists, created images of New York City from street level. Following older artist Robert Henri's insistence that artists should make...

This lavishly illustrated book explores the development of portrait painting in Northern and Southern Europe during the Renaissance, when the genre first flourished. While both regions developed distinct styles and techniques, each was also influence...

The neo-avant-garde and postmodernism have long been understood in terms of their re-working of modernism and a narrative emphasizing rupture and new beginnings. Compelling continuities between the two, especially in postwar Britain, suggest that a n...

The American art collector Norton Simon assembled his astonishing collection of more than 8,000 artworks in just thirty-five years. In 1966, with no permanent home for the growing collection, Simon created his 'museum without walls' programme – lendi...

America is the first world power to inhabit an immense land mass open at both ends to the world's two largest oceans – the Atlantic and the Pacific. This gives America a great competitive advantage often overlooked by Atlanticists, whose focus remain...

The statistics are startling. Since 1973, America's imprisonment rate has multiplied over five times to become the highest in the world. More than two million inmates reside in state and federal prisons. What does this say about our attitudes toward...

Despite the enduring importance of the U. S. -Japan security alliance, the broader relationship between the two countries is today beset by sobering new difficulties. In this comprehensive comparative analysis of the transpacific alliance and its pol...