** Longlisted for the 2024 Cundill History Prize**‘A dozen pages in I realized that I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book’ Annie ProulxA way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban.In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people...

A historian's personal journey into the complex questions of immigration, home and nationFrom Ireland to London in the 1950s, Derry in the Troubles to contemporary, de-industrialised Manchester, Joyce finds the ties of place, family and the past are difficult to break. Why do certain places continue to haunt us? What does it mean to be British after the suffering of Empire and of war? How do we make our home in a hypermobile world without remembering our pasts?Patrick Joyce...

The liberal governance of the nineteenth-century state and city depended on the "rule of freedom." As a form of rule it relied on the production of certain kinds of citizens and patterns of social life, which in turn depended on transforming both the material form of the city (its layout, architecture, infrastructure) and the ways it was inhabited and imagined by its leaders, citizens and custodians.Focusing mainly on London and Manchester, but with reference also to Glasgow, Dubli...

An e book that will soften the hearts of even the most stubborn non-believers and atheists, written by a former devout atheist. If this book opens the eyes of only one person, it will have been worth the effort.

What is the state? The State of Freedom offers an important new take on this classic question by exploring what exactly the state did and how it worked. Patrick Joyce asks us to re-examine the ordinary things of the British state from dusty government files and post offices to well-thumbed primers in ancient Greek and Latin and the classrooms and dormitories of public schools and Oxbridge colleges. This is also a history of the 'who' and the 'where' of the state, of the people who ran the ...

Brought to you by Penguin.A way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban.In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people. In contrast to the usual insulting stereotypes, we discover a rich and complex culture: traditions, songs, celebrations, and revolts, across Europe from the plains of Poland ...

For centuries, spiritual seekers have profited from reading accounts of people’s spiritual journeys. Well-known examples include Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, Teresa of Avila’s The Story of Her Life, Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, and M.K. Gandhi’s The Story of my Life. Reading such spiritual autobiographies can provide us with light for our own journeys and can help us correct course when we veer off the path. Some readers of this autobiography by Kevin Patrick Joyce, Surprise...

A groundbreaking study of the connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in American literature and US slave culture.Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveho...

F.Scott Fitzgerald - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 02. O.Henry - The Gift of the Magi 03. Mark Twain - On The Decay of the Art of Lying 04. Sun Tzu - The Art of War 05. E.A. Poe - The Raven 06. Kahlil Gibran - The Madman 07. W.W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw 08. Anonymous - Aladdin 09. The Founding Fathers - The Declaration of Independence 10. Plato - The Apology of Socrates 11. Lord Alfred Tennyson - Charge of the Light Brigade 12. T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land 13. William Dean How...

Addressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy's featured story recounts his quest to uncover his family's Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection.Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on journeying home, whether the authors are ac...

Ambitious young reporters Josie and Laurent arrive in Prague in 1968 to cover a revolution unfolding behind the Iron Curtain. It’s the story of a lifetime. A dream come true.A dream that’s about to become a nightmare.Soviet tanks thunder into the city, changing everything. Josie receives a cryptic message from a shrouded stranger on a mist-covered bridge, and soon she and Laurent are propelled onto a collision course with nefarious villains...

From haunting ghost stories to classic fairy tales, Going Public … In Shorts! is a collection of forty classic and lesser-known works by history's greatest writers.Among the stories included are "The Death of a Government Clerk," Anton Chekhov's defining vignette; "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," Mark Twain's comedic story that earned him national fame; "The Gift of the Magi," O. Henry's masterful Christmastime tale about love and sacrifice; and "The Stor...