Books in the What is History? series

What is environmental history? It is a kind of history that seeks understanding of human beings as they have lived, worked, and thought in relationship to the rest of nature through the changes brought by time. In this new edition of his seminal student textbook, J.

A new edition of the best-selling introductory book to cultural history. Written by one of the world's top cultural historians. Brings this primer up-to-date with new material on the turns cultural history is taking in the early 21st Century and further-reaching global examples.

What is Medieval History? provides an accessible, far-ranging and passionate guide to the study of medieval history. The book discusses the creation of the academic field, the nature of the sources, the intellectual tools used by medievalists, and key areas of thematic importance from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation.

This book introduces the fast-developing field of book history. James Raven, a leading historian of the book, offers a fresh and accessible guide to the global study of the production, dissemination and reception of written and printed texts across all societies and in all ages.

Until the 1970s the history of sexuality was a marginalized practice. Today it is a flourishing field, increasingly integrated into the mainstream and producing innovative insights into the ways in which societies shape and are shaped by sexual values, norms, identities and desires.

What is intellectual history? Those who practice intellectual history have described themselves as eavesdroppers upon the conversations of the past, explorers of alien ideological worlds, and translators between historic societies and our own, while their critics have often derided them as narrow-mindedly studying the ideas of dead white men.

* This is a new addition to Polity s highly successful What is History series.

What is the history of knowledge? This engaging and accessible introduction explains what is distinctive about the new field of the history of knowledge (or, as some scholars say, knowledges in the plural ) and how it differs from the history of science, intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge or from cultural history.

What is slavery? It seems a simple enough question. Despite the long history of the institution and its widespread use around the globe, many people still largely associate slavery, outside of the biblical references in the Old Testament, to the enslavement of Africans in America, particularly the United States.

Scholarship on African American history has changed dramatically since the publication of George Washington Williams pioneering A History of the Negro Race in America in 1882.

This clear, readable introduction to the popular field of military history is now available in a refreshed and updated second edition. It shows that military history encompasses not just accounts of campaigns and battles but includes a wide range of perspectives on all aspects of past military organization and activity.

* Provides a short and accessible introduction to the field of gender history. * Examines the origins and development of the field and elucidates current debates and controversies. * Discusses in a clear manner pitched at undergraduate students the various methods and approaches used by gender historians.

* Introductory overview of the discipline of architectural history, in the What is History? series. * Provides students with an entry point to the major theories, concepts, and debates around the study of the history of architecture.

The study of migration is and always has been an interdisciplinary field of study, vast and vibrant in nature. This book takes in its scope an overview of migrations through history, how classic theories have interpreted such movements, and contemporary topics and debates including transnational and transcultural lives, and access to citizenship.

Global and world history address the deep structural changes that have shaped human experience. Many are material, related to environmental and climatic alteration, to the domestication of livestock and development of agriculture, to technology, to disease, and to variations in human immunity, reproduction, and physiology.

* What is Medical History? will be an invaluable textbook for all students of the history of medicine and science. * The second title in Polity's new series, 'What is History?', designed to be a key introductory textbook for students of the history of medicine and science.