This Element explores the idea of publication in media used before, alongside, and after print. It contrasts multiple traditions of unprinted communication in their diversity and particularity. This decentres print as the means for understanding publication; instead, publication is seen as an heuristic term which identifies activities these traditions share, but which also differ in ways not reducible to comparisons with printing. The Element engages with texts written on papyrus, chiselle...

The incomparable Mary Beard is back, and she’s talking all things classics.Why the ongoing fascination with the ancient world? This witty, approachable book asks why—for better or (sometimes) worse—antiquity continues to exert such a powerful hold on the contemporary imagination. Recalling a formative childhood encounter with a four-thousand-year-old piece of bread in a museum, Beard introduces the idea of thauma, or wonder, that kick-started a lifetime en...

A foundational moment in the history of modern European thought, the Enlightenment continues to be a reference point for philosophers, scholars and opinion-formers. To many it remains the inspiration of our commitments to the betterment of the human condition. To others, it represents the elevation of one set of European values to the world, many of whose peoples have quite different values. But what is the relationship between the historical Enlightenment and the idea of 'Enlightenment', ...

'A rich history… Harding writes with energy and insight, wearing a tremendous amount of learning lightly' - Rana Mitter, Financial TimesThis rich and enjoyable book by the acclaimed author of Japan Story explores the many ways in which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries of tangled, dynamic encountersFrom the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most...

From a New York Times bestselling historian, the “truly revelatory” (Wall Street Journal) story of how the alphabet ordered our worldA Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. Once we’ve learned our ABCs as children, few of us ever think of them again, but alphabetical order plays a material role in our adult lives. From school registers to electoral rolls, from dictio...

Translation is everywhere, and matters to everybody. Translation doesn't only give us foreign news, dubbed films and instructions for using the microwave: without it, there would be no world religions, and our literatures, our cultures, and our languages would be unrecognisable. In this Very Short Introduction, Matthew Reynolds gives an authoritative and thought-provoking account of the field, from ancient Akkadian to World English, from St Jerome to Google Translate. He shows how...

A prehistory of today's humanities, from ancient Greece to the early twentieth centuryMany today do not recognize the word, but "philology" was for centuries nearly synonymous with humanistic intellectual life, encompassing not only the study of Greek and Roman literature and the Bible but also all other studies of language and literature, as well as history, culture, art, and more. In short, philology was the queen of the human sciences. How did it become little m...

Linear and progressive views of history have dominated the popular imagination for the past seventy years in a worldview wedded to the inexorable rise of globalisation and GDP-growth at any cost. However, the end of the Cold War failed to produce the end of history as hoped, a fact brought home to many by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Material wealth and 'Progress’ in the name of ‘social justice’ have not made people happier or more united but quite the opposite. Anxiety, depressio...

With typical eloquence and wisdom, in The Way of St Benedict Rowan Williams explores the appeal of St Benedict's sixth-century Rule, showing it to be a document of great relevance to present day Christians and non-believers at our particular moment in history.For over a millennium the Rule – a set of guidelines for monastic conduct – has been influential on the life of Benedictine monks, but has also served in some sense as a 'background note' to almost al...

"Knowledge is of two kinds," said Samuel Johnson in 1775. "We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." Today we think of Wikipedia as the source of all information, the ultimate reference. Yet it is just the latest in a long line of aggregated knowledge--reference works that have shaped the way we've seen the world for centuries.You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the w...

A beautifully written personal account of the discovery of late antiquity by one of the world’s most influential and distinguished historiansThe end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the develop...

A concise edition of the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to the Book, this book features the 51 articles from the Companion plus 3 brand new chapters in one affordable volume. The 54 chapters introduce readers to the fascinating world of book history. Including 21 thematic studies on topics such as writing systems, the ancient and the medieval book, and the economics of print, as well as 33 regional and national histories of 'the book', offering a truly global survey of...