The concerns of daily life prompted early modern people to seek reassurance in fate, stars, and astrologers.

The Tree Hunters is, like Pakenham’s earlier books, beautifully written and enjoyable to read. It radiates pleasure in its ...

Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus by John Haywood and Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and ...

As so often in study of the past, continuing to ask the question matters more than agreeing upon an answer. Buildings made of ...

Perhaps the movement’s most recognisable aspect was its enigmatic leader ‘Rebecca’, purported to be taken from Genesis, in ...

Why are you a historian of the Atlantic World? The Atlantic World is so vast and diverse; I’ll never run out of places and peoples to study. Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History, as it ...

Disputing Disaster is a book about the First World War’s origins and causes, not – as its title suggests – the war itself. It discusses six historians who have written on a century-old debate that has ...

The Chinese folk tale The Snail-Shell Girl tells the story of a poor man who falls in love with a beautiful woman who lives in a shell, their path to happiness thwarted by an evil landlord. Adapted ...

Absinthe, once the ‘Green Fairy’ – muse of painters and poets – came to haunt the last decades of 19th-century France. ‘Of all the alcoholic poisons that lead to crime, there is none more formidable ...