The Smoke of London uncovers the origins of urban air pollution, two centuries before the industrial revolution. By 1600, London was a fossil-fuelled city, its high-sulfur coal a basic necessity for the poor and a source of cheap energy for its growing manufacturing sector. The resulting smoke was found ugly and dangerous throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leading to challenges in court, suppression by the crown, doctors' attempts to understand the nature of good air, inc...

The earliest known and longest lasting mistress of Henry VIII, Bessie Blount was the kings first love. More beautiful that Anne Boleyn or any of Henrys other wives or concubines, Bessies beauty and other charms ensured that she turned heads, winning a place at court as one of Catherine of Aragons ladies. Within months she was partnering the king in dancing and she rose to be the woman with the most influence over Henry, much to Catherine of Aragons despair. The affair lasted five years (lo...

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and ami...

*Analyzes Cesare's legacy and how it endured over the centuries.*Examines the legends and rumors surrounding Cesare's life in an attempt to separate fact from fiction.*Includes pictures depicting Cesare and other important people in his life.*Includes a Bibliography for further reading.*Includes a Table of Contents. "Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; nonetheless, that cruelty united Romagna and brought it peace and stability. On careful reflection, he was more merciful than the Florentin...

Shortlisted for the 2008 Katharine Briggs Award.For centuries the witch has been a powerful figure in the European imagination; but the creation of this figure has been hidden from our view. Charles Zika’s groundbreaking study investigates how the visual image of the witch was created in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. He charts the development of the witch as a new visual subject, showing how the traditional imagery of magic and sorcery of m...

Environmental politics has many faces and operates at multiple scales: it preoccupies individuals as well as governments, drives local agreements as well as international treaties, results in minor business changes as well as wholesale business decisions, and fluctuates between a politics of protest and one of accommodation. In this Very Short Introduction Andrew Dobson offers a lively and comprehensive commentary on the many facets of environmental politics today. Looking towards...

In the spring of 2010, we watched oil gushing unstoppably into thewaters of the Gulf of Mexico. But as bad as the spill was, it isonly the latest chapter in a century-long story of destruction.Atthe height of BP's dispersant madness, the amount sprayed each daymerely equaled the amount of dispersant that washes down the Mississippifrom the Heartland's dishwashers and washing machines. Coastal drillinghas damaged the region's ecology far more...

A Study in Fading Chivalry by a Professor of History at Princeton University. Pierre Bayard belonged to a generation of men so fully absorbed in the sport of war that decades of their lives were often spent in battle following the whims of kings whom they believed acted on their behalf in an evil world.  Their ideals were few and clear: duty, the service of honor, and the responsibility of noblesse―nothing more.   In the long history of mounted warfare, Cheva...

Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, this lavishly illustrated volume looks at all the different aspects of the 100-day campaign which has become synonymous with the Napoleonic Wars and saw the eventual defeat of Napoleon's French forces.Ten articles by internationally renowned historians examine the battle from different angles, from the microcosm of the bitter fighting for the fortified farmhouse of Hougoumont through to a w...

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies and travellers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book ...

As demand for natural resources increases due to the rise in world population and living standards, conflicts over their access and control are becoming more prevalent. This book critically assesses different approaches to and conceptualizations of resource fairness and justice and applies them to the analysis of resource conflicts.Approaches addressed include cosmopolitan liberalism, political economy and political ecology. These are applied at various scales (local, national, int...

Henry VIII fought many wars, against the French and Scots, against rebels in England and the Gaelic lords of Ireland, even against his traditional allies in the Low Countries. But how much did these wars really affect his subjects? And what role did Henry's reign play in the long-term transformation of England's military capabilities? The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII searches for the answers to these questions in parish and borough account books, wills and memoirs, buildi...