The "long nineteenth century" was an age of empire and empire builders, of state formation and expansion, and of colonial and imperial wars and conquest throughout most of the world. It was also an age that saw enormous changes in how people gave me…

Historians of sexuality have often assumed that medieval people were less interested in sex than we are. But people in the Middle Ages wrote a great deal about sex: in confessors' manuals, in virginity treatises, and in literary texts. This volume l…

In the period between 1650 and 1820 new worlds of sex opened up. This was a pivotal time when old religious beliefs and medical theories about sexuality and the body clashed with innovatory ideas emerging from natural science and philosophy. In addi…

The human body was revolutionized in the 20th century. Developments in politics, sexuality, technology, and culture all acted to reshape our understanding of our bodies. The human body in the 21st century is less fixed than ever before with some the…

In the 20th century, many aspects of life became 'a matter of perception' in the wake of the multiplication of media, stylistic experimentation, and the rise of multiculturalism. Life sped up as a result of new modes of transportation automobiles an…

Europe saw such revolutionary cultural change between 1450 and 1650 that those who witnessed the transformations conceived of the period as a time of rebirth. Ideas and practices around sexuality were transformed as much as any other aspect of socie…

Sexual cultures have changed enormously in the 20th century. We have greater sexual equality than ever before and homosexuality has shifted from being a crime, a sin, and a disease to an acknowledged and sometimes legally sanctioned variation. Howev…

Between 1800 and 1920, middle-class women in the West fought for education, employment, equitable marriage and custody laws, and the vote. Poor women demanded literacy, labor and child protection laws, food, and shelter. Colonization and migrations…

The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities of medieval western Europe conceived of the human body in manifold ways. The body was not a fixed or unmalleable mass of flesh, but an entity that changed its character depending on its age, its interact…

The Enlightenment, 1650-1800 was a time when people began to take stock of their intrinsic worth as individuals. Of course, slaves were still property, servants and apprentices were indentured, daughters "belonged" to fathers and brothers, wives to…

A Cultural History of Women in Antiquity explores women's history in the West from 500 BCE to 1000CE. This time period includes women's participation in Greek and Roman civilization, and the Christianization of the Roman Empire up to Late Antiquity.…

As much as the nineteenth and early twentieth century gardens and their designs were a product and representation of industrialisation and urbanisation, they were also motors of change. Gardens became an industry in and of themselves. They were both…

A Cultural History of Gardens presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers over 2500 years of gardens as physical, social and artistic spaces. 1. A Cultural History of Gardens in Antiquity (600 B…