History 151 - World History I (Matsumoto): Books

Opening with a lucid overview of the rise and spread of Islam, from the seventh to the twenty-first century, this Very Short Introduction introduces the story of Islamic history, charting the evolution of what was originally a small, localized community of believers into an international religion with over a billion adherents.

In this meticulously researched and eminently readable study, Meir Shahar considers the economic, political, and religious factors that led Shaolin monks to disregard the Buddhist prohibition against violence and instead create fighting techniques that by the twenty-first century have spread throughout the world.

A history of Western civilization's rise to global dominance offers insight into the development of such concepts as competition, modern medicine, and the work ethic, arguing that Western dominance is being lost to cultures who are more productively utilizing Western techniques.

The author offers a fresh perspective by focusing on the sea itself: its practical importance for transport and sustenance; its dynamic role in the rise and fall of empires; and the remarkable cast of characters-sailors, merchants, migrants, pirates, pilgrims-who have crossed and re-crossed it.

One of the most useful books dealing with Italian social history, this unique volume offers readers a glimpse into the private lives of two Florentine businessmen during the late 14th century. Excellent primary source material.

In Tutankhamen, acclaimed Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley unshrouds the enigmatic king. She explores his life and legacy as never before, and offers a compelling new window onto the world in which he lived.

In a masterly return to the classical sources, the author, Stacy Schiff, boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.

An overview of the roles of women in the ancient societies of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Near East. Sifting through a range of evidence from written and material culture, and focusing in particular on visual imagery.

Ranging from the late-19th century to the present, 'Slavery in the Modern World' examines the full extent of unfree labor practices in use today.

Christianity and equality -- Civic humanism -- Liberalism -- Conservatism -- Socialism -- Nationalism -- Fascism -- Realism in foreign policy -- Islamism -- Democracy -- Epilogue : Albion, Rome, and Athens

A little over a century ago, bubonic plague - the same Black Death that decimated medieval Europe - arrived on the shores of Hawaii just as the islands were about to become a U.S. territory. This is the story of that fearful visitation and its fiery climax.

The author chronicles perceptions and responses to plague and pestilence over two thousand years of western history. Leporsy p. 21-30; Black Death (plague) p. 37-53; see INDEX for more diseases.

A comprehensive historical account of medicine and medical philanthropy in the first five centuries of the Christian era.

This work deals with the medical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. Articles survey Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Egyptian, and Tibetan medicine.

The author examines epidemics through history to show how they reflect the particular social and cultural anxieties of their times. Draws on instances of "dread spread" from Greek and Roman times to the present.

In this innovative study, medical historian Luke Demaitre explores medical and social perspectives on leprosy at a time when judicious diagnosis could spare healthy people from social ostracization and help the afflicted get a license to beg.

Biology of Plagues offers a completely new interdisciplinary interpretation of the plagues of Europe, and establishes them within a geographical, historical, and demographic framework.

This introduction to the history of medicine begins with the evolution of infectious diseases at the end of the last ice age. It describes the origin of science and medicine in ancient civilizations, including China and India.

The Middle Ages are often viewed as a repository of tradition, yet what we think of as traditional marriage was far from the only available alternative to the single state in medieval Europe.

At last some light is thrown on the erstwhile silent and shadowy figures of women under the Fatimids which gives them a presence in the history of women in medieval and pre-modern dynasties. Roles as mothers, courtesans, wives and daughters, and as workers and servants.

This study, based on extensive use of primary source materials, shows that London's economic growth was in part due to the substantial wealth that women transmitted through marriage.

The author delves deeply into these texts, examining these Egyptian Aramaic documents in order to make public the lives of women, including their social status, their economic activities, and their private lives.

By focusing on a particular time and place, the author elucidates the culture of England's metropolitan center but also contributes generally to our understanding of the social mechanisms through which premodern European people negotiated their lives.

The author broadens the scope of the more typical ecclesiastical court assessments to include records of manor and borough courts, the king's court, coroners' rolls, gaol deliveries, confessors' manuals, and select works of literary, visual, and dramatic art.

An important analysis of Japan's population from 1150 to 1600 and considers social and economic developments that were life and death issues for ordinary Japanese.See INDEX: families; children; marriage; etc.
2009 Print Edition: Call number HN723 .F37 2009

Explores a broad range of topics relating to women in antiquity, including: Mother-Goddess Theory; Women in Homer, Pre-Roman Italy, the Near East; Women and the Family, the State, and Religion; Dress and Adornment; Female Patronage; Hellenistic Queens; Imperial Women; and more.

Discusses the absence of women in the Confucian canonical tradition and examine the presence of women in politics, family, education, and art in premodern China, Korea, and Japan.

Early medieval women exercised public roles, rights, and responsibilities. Women contributed through their labor to the welfare of the community. Women played an important part in public affairs. Chapters include: land, family, marriage, child custody, and more.

The author explores parallels between marriage and concubinage that legitimized sex and legitimated offspring using eighth- through tenth-century legal texts.

Perspectives on the "what" and "why" traditions of tolerance in world religions, beginning with the pre-Christian West, Greco-Roman paganism, and ancient Israelite Monotheism and moving into modern religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Through compelling historical illustration and careful theological exposition, this book mounts a concise but irrefutable argument that the Islamic faith is inherently and emphatically tolerant by nature and disposition.

This book compares shifting formulations of gender, interfaith, and ethnic relations in the Near East, Europe, the Americas, and Africa from antiquity to the nineteenth century. Pre-modern gender, religious, and cultural encounters explored.

This groundbreaking book surveys the entire history of popular religious sects in Chinese history. In part one the reader will find a thorough treatment of the formation of the notions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the contexts of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism.

Volume II discusses the major consequences that arose from Egypt's system. The religious, funerary, afterlife and societal views of Egyptians are compared to the other major religions and societies.

The author leads the general reader through ancient Egypt, exploring the maze of facts and fantasies, and examines Egypt's place in the history of religion and monotheism in particular. He shows how Egypt both influenced and mystified other civilizations for centuries.

There is a myth that before the rise of secularism in the modern period, intolerance and persecution held sway throughout Europe. In Beyond the Persecuting Society John Christian Laursen, Cary J. Nederman, and nine other scholars dismantle this generalization.

A provocative analysis of the roots of peacemaking in the Western world elucidates struggles for peace that took place in the high and late Middle Ages.

A masterly synthesis and summary of the present state of knowledge and debates on various aspects of warfare in medieval Catholic Europe between AD 300 and 1500.

The latest scholarship on several aspects of the conflict...the impact of the crossbow and longbow on the great battles of the conflict, great leaders of the war, and economic, literary, and psychological aspects of the conflict.

The development treated in this volume of a variety of staff weapons in the Medieval and Renaissance periods in Europe is of importance, as the repeated success of their use caused substantive political changes.

his volume, the first of a two-volume set, is the work of fourteen European and American scholars and focuses on the wider aspects of the Hundred Years...includes topics as urban history, and the actualities of weapon use on the battlefield.

Addresses warfare in Europe, the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. In three parts, the contributors explore warfare in theory, warfare in practice and warfare as perceived through medieval and modern historiography.

Rather than celebrating warfare, this text looks at the clashes the author believes have had the most profound impact on world history. Listed in order of their relevance to the modern world, they range from the ancient past to the present day and span the globe many times over.

In this major new history of battle from the age of Homer through the decline of the Roman empire, the author surveys a millennium of warfare to discover how militaries change—and don’t change—and how an army’s greatness depends on its use of the past.

The author looks at how this Western Way of War was constructed and maintained by the Greeks and Romans and why this concept is so prevalent today. All aspects of ancient warfare are thoroughly examined--from philosophy and strategy to the technical skills needed to fight.

The history of China is a history of warfare. Rarely in its 3,000-year existence has the country not been beset by war, rebellion, or raids. A definitive look at the tools and methods that won wars and shaped culture in ancient China.

Offers detailed portraits of six great captains of the ancient world who met the challenges of their age and shaped the future of their societies, and civilization itself, through their actions. Includes: Thutmose III of Egypt, Sargon II of Assyria, Philip II of Macedon, Hannibal of Carthage, Scipio Africanus of Republican Rome, and Caesar Augustus of Imperial Rome.

Writing from an Iranian rather than a European perspective, the author integrates the significant cultural and literary history of Iran with its political and social history.

This book presents an alternative interpretation of that role, less exclusively economic, more broadly based, and focused on the T'ang period, one of China's acknowledged golden ages.

The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity.

Sections on numerous topics, among which are samurai values, Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony, Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, the story of the forty-seven ronin, Mito scholarship in the early nineteenth century, and mass culture and comics in contemporary times.

In this engaging history, world-renowned historian Hugh Kennedy deftly sews together the stories of the people, armies, and events that conquered an area from Spain to China in just over 100 years.

This is an introduction to the history of the Muslim East from the rise of Islam to the Mongol conquests. It explains and indicates the main trends of Islamic historical evolution during the Middle Age.

The first comprehensive survey to illustrate how Africans have influenced regions beyond their continent’s borders, how they have been influenced from the outside and how internal African developments can be compared to those elsewhere in the world.

An important analysis of Japan's population from 1150 to 1600 and considers social and economic developments that were life and death issues for ordinary Japanese.

Ancient sources reveal that after the Augustan conquest of Egypt, valued commodities from India, Arabia and China became increasingly available to Roman society. These sources describe how Roman traders went far beyond the frontiers of their Empire.

The author explores the role of Islam in precipitating Europe´s twelfth century commercial renaissance.

This reference work for the first time gives a full and conveniently arranged overview of China’s diplomatic and trade relations with its major and minor Asian neighbours: continental South Asia and the islands, Japan, Korea, Northeast Asia, Tibet, Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, and the Hsia, Liao, and Chin States.

This alphabetically arranged encyclopedia is designed as a reference tool for those wishing to learn about trade in history and its impact on social and political issues in given periods. Treating the subject across time, from the ancient world to the present, the 450 topical, biographical, and broad-issue essays cover a variety of topics, from specific countries, regions, and continents to trade organizations, such as the Hanseatic League and World Trade Organization, to biographical entries for those who have influenced world commerce, such as Christopher Columbus and Peter the Great. Historical episodes that have altered the course of trade (for example, the fall of the Roman Empire) are included as well, along with lengthier essays on general topics that correlate with changing trade relations, such as Religion and Warfare.
-Booklist

"From King Cane to the Last Sugar Mill focuses on the technological and scientific advances that allowed Hawai`i’s sugar industry to become a world leader and Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company (HC&S) to survive into the twenty-first century. The authors, both agricultural scientists, offer a detailed history of the industry and its contributions, balanced with discussion of the enormous societal and environmental changes due to its aggressive search for labor, land, and water."
-UH Press

In Sugar in the Social Life of Medieval Islam, Tsugitaka Sato explores actual day-to-day life in medieval Muslim societies through sugar cultivation, production, and trade, and sugar's use as a sweetener, a medicine, and a symbol of power.

This study examines the wholesale trade in sugar from Brazil to markets in Europe. The principal market was northwestern Europe, but for much of the time between 1550 and 1630 Portugal was drawn into the conflict between Habsburg Spain and the Dutch Republic. In spite of political obstacles, the trade persisted because it was not subject to monopolies and was relatively lightly regulated and taxed. The investment structure was highly international, as Portugal and northwestern Europe exchanged communities of merchants who were mobile and inter-imperial in both their composition and organization. This conclusion challenges an imperial or mercantilist perspective of the Atlantic economy in its earliest phases.
-Amazon

The idea that sugar, plantations, slavery, and capitalism were all present at the birth of the Atlantic world has long dominated scholarly thinking. In nine original essays by a multinational group of top scholars, Tropical Babylons re-evaluates this so-called "sugar revolution." The most comprehensive comparative study to date of early Atlantic sugar economies, this collection presents a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world.
-Amazon

Puer tea has been grown for centuries in the "Six Great Tea Mountains" of Yunnan Province, and in imperial China it was a prized commodity, traded to Tibet by horse or mule caravan via the so-called Tea Horse Road and presented as tribute to the emperor in Beijing. In the 1990s, as the tea's noble lineage and unique process of aging and fermentation were rediscovered, it achieved cult status both in China and internationally. The tea became a favorite among urban connoisseurs who analyzed it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices. In 2007, however, local events and the international economic crisis caused the Puer market to collapse.
-Amazon

In this nuanced ethnography, Sarah Besky narrates the lives of tea workers in Darjeeling. She explores how notions of fairness, value, and justice shifted with the rise of fair-trade practices and postcolonial separatist politics in the region. This is the first book to explore how fair-trade operates in the context of large-scale plantations.
-Amazon

In the first 1,000 years after Christ, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants, and military men traveled on the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road. Linking Europe, India, and the Far East, the route passed through many countries and many settlements, from the splendid city of Samarkand to tiny desert hamlets. Susan Whitfield creates a rich and varied portrait of life along the greatest trade route in history in a vivid, lively, and learned account that spans the eighth through the tenth centuries. Recounting the lives of ten individuals who lived at different times during this period, Whitfield draws on contemporary sources and uses firsthand accounts whenever possible to reconstruct the history of the route through the personal experiences of these characters.
-Amazon

In this book contributions by archaeologists and numismatists from six countries address different aspects of how silver was used in both Scandinavia and the wider Viking world during the 8th to 11th centuries AD. The volume brings together a combination of recent summaries and new work on silver and gold coinage, rings and bullion, which allow a better appreciation of the broader socioeconomic conditions of the Viking world. This is an indispensable source for all archaeologists, historians and numismatists involved in Viking Studies.
-Amazon

Provides a detailed examination of medieval society's views on both gender and sexuality, and shows how they are inextricably linked. Sex roles were clearly defined in the medieval world and this book examines both the commonplace world view and the exceptions to it.

Explores the implications of sex-for-pay across a broad span of time, from ancient Mesopotamia to the early Christian period.

The essays in this volume present new work that, in one way or another, "queers" stabilized conceptions of the Middle Ages, allowing us to see the period and its systems of sexuality in radically different, off-center, and revealing ways.

This study of intellectual conceptions of sex and sexuality in China will be welcomed by students and scholars of early China and by those with an interest in the comparative development of ancient cultures.

The author shows how European scholars deployed a standard set of philosophical tools and a variety of rhetorical strategies to produce scientific approaches to sodomy.

The author chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan.

A fascinating exploration of what happens to established ideas about men and women, and their roles, when different cultural systems come into contact.

This book presents the first assessment of one of the most rapidly expanding fields of research: the history of sexuality.

A comprehensive collection of original essays relating to aspects of gender and sexuality in the classical world.

A general introduction to this volume addresses issues such as sexual orientation in antiquity, moral judgments, class and ideology, and lesbianism.

Mothers, wives, concubines, entertainers, attendants, officials, maids, drudges. By offering the first comparative view of the women who lived, worked, and served in royal courts around the globe, this work opens a new perspective on the monarchies that have dominated much of human history.

From the Peloponnesian War to the Gulf War, from Achilles to Lawrence of Arabia, gays and lesbians have played a crucial but often hidden role in military campaigns. This anthology will forever change the way we think about "gays in the military."

The seventeen chapters include "The Physical Basis of Law," "Law Among Primordial Men," "Babylonian Law," "The Jewish Law," "Law Among the Greeks," "The Roman Creation of Modern Law," "Medieval Law in Europe," "The Origins of English Law," and "International Law.

Medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law, legal procedure, and the ideals of justice and equity. Many of our most important modern institutions and legal conceptions grew out of medieval law in its myriad forms (Roman, canon, common, customary, and feudal).

The study of written laws of four thousand years ago; includes a comparison of ancient laws with modern principles.

The most important creation of the Romans was their law. In this book, the author discusses the way in which the Roman jurists created and developed law and the way in which Roman law has come down to us.

The first comprehensive survey of the world's oldest known legal systems, this collaborative work of twenty-two scholars covers over 3,000 years of legal history of the Ancient Near East.

Crime is a matter of interpretation, especially in the Middle Ages, when societies faced with new ideas and pressures were continually forced to rethink what a crime was-and what was a crime.

What can we learn about the world of an ancient empire from the ways that people complain when they feel that they have been violated? What role did law play in people's lives? And what did they expect their government to do for them when they felt harmed and helpless?

This textbook describes and interprets all schools of Islamic political thought, their origins, inter-connections and meaning. It examines the Qur'an, the early Caliphate, classical Islamic philosophy and the political culture of the Ottoman and other empires.

Examining how public political discourse influenced the distribution of power between the Senate and people in the Late Roman Republic (133-42 BC), this work analyzes comprehensively the "ideology" of Republican mass oratory.