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While the term ‘radical’ is an effective hook for his readers, its use in Andrew Bradstock’s Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England is in some ways problematic. In the introduction the author sets out his awareness of this fact, and the pressing need to identify criteria by which ‘radical’ may be determined, but sidesteps precisely defining the term himself.
Chocolate, writes Emma Robertson in the introduction to her monograph, ‘has been invested with specific cultural meanings which are in part connected to … conditions of production’ (p. 3). At the heart of this study is a challenge to existing histories:
There was a time, not so long ago, when the history of the Jewish communities of 12th- and 13th-century England was a neglected subject in English historical studies. No longer.
David Wootton discloses to the reader on page 182 that his aim is to provide an intellectual biography of Galileo Galilei. But this book does not. Wootton's aim is rather to re-enter, re-open or even unhinge the structures of all arguments about the so-called Galileo affair that have been written until now.
John Smolenski, Associate Professor of History at University of California- Davis, begins his tome, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (a work within the Early American Studies series) with an appropriate discussion of and lesson on the complex etymology of the word creole.
The late Middle Ages are a challenging period to survey and synthesise. Any attempt to summarise their complexity, chaos, and dynamism within a restricted publisher’s word limit and at the same time provide an effective textbook for undergraduates is fraught with issues of coverage, comprehensiveness, and accessibility.
On Sunday 1 or Sunday 8 April 1649 – it is difficult, as the editors note, to establish the date with certainty (vol. 1, p. 28) – five people went to St. George’s Hill in the parish of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey and began digging the earth. They sowed the unfertile ground with parsnips, carrots and beans, returning the next day in increased numbers.
Often forgotten in any analysis of American constitutional rights is the extent to which those rights are grounded in the state-level revolutionary settlements prior to 1787.
Over the past 15 years Joseph Bergin has produced two monographs on French bishops which are notable for their ambitious scopes and for their contributions to our understanding of the French Church in the 17th century.(1) His new work Church, Society and Religious Change in France, 1580–1730 is an even more monumental study that only a scholar with his past ac
25 years ago, in a provocative reconsideration of English political and social history, English Society 1688–1832, J. C. D.