One of our most brilliant minds offers a sweeping intellectual history that argues for the reclamation of culture's value. Culture is a defining aspect of what it means to be human. Defining culture and pinpointing its role in our lives is not, howe...

A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window. Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, politi...

In this intimate history of the extraordinary Black Plague pandemic that swept through the British Isles in 1665, Evelyn Lord focuses on the plague's effects on smaller towns, where every death was a singular blow affecting the entire community. Lord...

"I was tired of speed. I wanted to live tree time". So writes Sumana Roy at the start of "How I Became a Tree", her captivating, adventurous, and self-reflective vision of what it means to be human in the natural world. Drawn to trees' wisdom, thei...

Crushed by the Romans in the first century A.D., the ancient Druids of Britain left almost no reliable evidence behind. Because of this, historian Ronald Hutton shows, succeeding British generations have been free to reimagine, reinterpret, and reinv...

The untold story about how the internet became social, and why this matters for its future. Fifteen years before the commercialization of the internet, millions of amateurs across North America created more than 100,000 small-scale computer network...

Britain's pagan past, with its mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artifacts, bloodthirsty legends, and cryptic inscriptions, is both enthralling and perplexing to a resident of the twenty-first century. In this ambitious and thoroughl...

A comprehensive history of the creation and growth of Lincoln Center, exploring the interconnections between politicians, financiers, and performing artists. In this comprehensive history of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, longtime Juilliard...

A fascinating exploration of the natural history of scent and human perceptions of fragrance from the viewpoint of plant and pollinator. Plants have long harnessed the chemical characteristics of aromatic compounds to shape the world around them. Fr...

An award-winning historian's revisionary account of the early modern world, showing how apocalyptic ideas stimulated political, religious, and intellectual transformations. In this revelatory immersion into the apocalyptic, messianic, and millenari...