Clio's favorites

Sample

Chris Wrigley. --

"A scholar gentleman in the old style; a northern non-conforming radical; an academic steeped in Oxford traditions; a late 20th-century media personality; one of the most outstanding historians of his age: A.J.P. Taylor was all of these. He wrote about traditional historical subjects in a traditional manner and took narrative history to new heights and was equally at home with a critical academic, as with a vast popular audience. This biographical study of A.J.P. Taylor includes details of Taylor's privileged and cosseted childhood, the effect of his close but combative and stimulating family, the dissenting and nonconformist tradition, and his time as teacher, broadcaster journalist and historian. It attempts to evaluate how far he fulfilled his aim and conviction as to the importance of history and its place at the heart of national consciousness."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Sample

Larry McMurtry

"What was achieved and destroyed, what was made up and forgotten in the American West as the continent was mapped, the natives were displaced, and exploits were transformed into legends? In this new collection, Larry McMurtry profiles explorers and martyrs, hucksters and scholars - figures in the West's enduring yet ever-shifting mixture of myth and reality."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

William H. McNeill

"William H. McNeill's seminal book The Rise of the West A. History of the Human Community (1963) received the National Book Award in 1964 and was later named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. From his post at the University of Chicago, McNeill became one of the first contemporary North American historians to write world history, seeking a broader interpretation of human affairs than that which prevailed in his youth." "A candid, intellectual memoir from one of the most famous and influential historians of our era. The Pursuit of Truth charts the development of McNeill's thinking and writing over seven decades. At the core of his worldview is the belief that historical truth does not derive exclusively from criticizing, paraphrasing, and summarizing written documents, nor is history merely, a record of how human intentions and plans succeeded or failed." "Over the course of his career as a historian, teacher, and mentor, McNeill expanded the range of history and integrated it into an evolutionary worldview uniting physical, biological, and intellectual processes, Accordingly, The Pursuit of Truth explores the personal and professional life of a man who affected the way a core academic discipline has been taught and understood in America."--Jacket.

Sample

Kate Davies

"Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren were radical friends in a revolutionary age. They produced definitive histories of the English Civil War and the American Revolution, attacked the British government and the United States federal constitution, and instigated a debate on women's rights which inspired Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith Sargent Murray, and other feminists. Drawing on new research (including recently discovered correspondence) this is the first book to consider Macaulay and Warren in the context of the revolutionary Atlantic. In a series of detailed interdisciplinary studies. Davies suggests the centrality of both women to transatlantic political cultures between the middle of the eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth."--BOOK JACKET.