History round-up

A Short History of Parliament

Author: Clyve Jones

Edition: First

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Pages: 400

Price: £75.00

ISBN 9781843835035

Jones offers an institutional history covering the English Parliament from its origins, the pre-1707 Scottish Parliament and the pre-1800 Irish Parliament, as well as the parliaments of Great Britain from 1707 and of the United Kingdom from 1801, and sections on post-devolution parliaments and assemblies and parliaments in the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and the Irish Republic. He considers membership of the Lords and the Commons; constituencies, elections and franchises, how business was arranged and managed, the evolution of parties and voting procedures, the balance of power between the two houses and the monarch's position in Parliament.

Contemporary World History

Author: William J. Duiker

Edition: Fifth international

Publisher: Cengage

Pages: 384

Price: £36.99

ISBN 9780495797357

Duiker provides a balanced history of the world in the 20th and early 21st century, covering key events in the former as well as the forces that shaped them, up to and including Barack Obama's presidency, the economic crisis and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Integrating political, economic, social and cultural history, this chronologically ordered synthesis highlights the age's most decisive moments, supplemented with photographs and primary source documents. New content in this edition includes the feature "Film and History", with updated material on topics including the Cold War and the Nonaligned Movement, postwar free trade, Palestine between the world wars, Putin's Russia, and France, Germany and Great Britain since 1995.

What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914

Editors: Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson

Edition: First

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Pages: 400

Price: £19.99

ISBN 9780199562503

This collection's 16 scholarly contributors furnish a broad and comprehensive history of European nationalism and its repercussions throughout the modern era, from wars and revolutions to social and cultural movements. Essays consider whether the distinction between civic and ethnic identities and politics in Europe should be reassessed.

Eastern Europe Since 1945

Authors: Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain

Edition: Fourth

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Pages: 360

Price £60.00 and £19.99

ISBN 9780230214590 and 4606

First published in 1993, this has long been a core text for understanding complex changes in the region in the second half of the 20th century and beyond. The revised and updated fourth edition incorporates new material and a focus on events occurring since the third edition. The authors offer an account of the genesis of European socialism, the 1956 de-Stalinisation crisis, and the operation of economies in the years of "actually existing socialism". Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the text highlights trends in the transition to capitalism and the impact of the EU.

Naval Power: A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500

Author: Jeremy Black

Edition: First

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Pages: 280

Price: £47.50 and £16.99

ISBN 97802302095 and 2801

Black considers navies as instruments of power and assesses what they reveal about state systems and cultures worldwide. Summarising important debates in the field, he organises his wide-ranging material into key historical periods and emphasises the continuities between past and present in the history of naval power.

The Second World War on the Eastern Front

Author: Lee Baker

Edition: First

Publisher: Pearson

Pages: 184

Price: £14.99

ISBN 9781405840637

Seeking to separate myth from reality and challenge the view that this was a war like any other, Baker offers a thorough overview of Russia's engagement with Germany on the Eastern Front, covering key battles and operation as well as the background and origins of the conflict. The text provides primary source material, documents, a glossary of terms and reading lists.

Women in Eighteenth Century Europe

Author: Margaret Hunt

Edition: First

Publisher: Pearson

Pages: 508

Price: £19.99

ISBN 9780582308657

The "century of women", argues Hunt, saw radical alterations to women's lives - for good and for ill - via changes to the nature of work, family life, sexuality, education, politics, religion and law. This text considers women of high and low social status and across professions and backgrounds, from queens to physicists, prostitutes to musicians.

A Concise History of the Middle East

Authors: Arthur Goldschmidt Jr and Lawrence Davidson

Edition: Ninth

Publisher: Perseus/Westview

Pages: 576

Price: £28.99

ISBN 9780813343884

Substantially revised to reflect recent events, this text seeks to offer a clear and broad treatment of this turbulent region from the dawn of Islam to the present day. Focuses include the evolution of Islamic institutions and culture, the West's influence, modernising governments, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian question, and the roles of Iran and Iraq in the post-9/11 landscape.

Themes of the American Civil War: The War Between the States

Editors: Susan-Mary Grant and Brian Holden-Reid

Edition: Second

Publisher: Routledge

Pages: 424

Price: £17.95

ISBN 9780415990875

In assessing the causes and consequences of this conflict, scholarly contributors consider why the Civil War retains its interest for historians and the public, and probe its divergent interpretations. This updated edition offers a new introduction, a chapter on gender and information on historical memory, as well as additional maps and appendices.

A Short History of the Middle Ages

Author: Barbara H. Rosenwein

Edition: Third revised

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Pages: 399

Price: £22.99

ISBN 9781442601048

Rosenwein considers this tumultuous era from the transformation of the Roman world, through the expansion of Europe and the "catastrophe and creativity" of the 14th and 15th centuries. A substantially updated third edition offers a new feature, "Seeing the Middle Ages", in addition to numerous colour maps and plates, genealogies and appendices of rulers, and a dedicated website offering study questions, illustrations and resources.

The 1960s: A Documentary Reader

Editor: Brian Ward

Edition: First

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Pages: 256

Price: £50.00

ISBN 9781405163309

Taking as its focus the United States in a turbulent decade, this reader offers a wide variety of primary source materials - including photographs, advertisements, first-hand testimony, speeches, court decisions, acts of Congress, secret memos, song lyrics and cartoons - to highlight the key themes of the era. Ward shapes the material into themes: including the economy's abundance amid poverty, the Cold War, the civil rights movement and the counterculture, the Vietnam war, gender and sexuality, conservatism, science and technology, and racial and ethnic identity.

Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837

Author: Linda Colley

Edition: Second

Publisher: Yale University Press

Pages: 442

Price: £10.99

ISBN 9780300152807

Colley's acclaimed and generously illustrated work considers the invention of the British nation in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union, and its nurturing via trade, empire, religion and conflict. This edition offers a substantial new preface by the author.