Books published by Reaktion Books

Georgia is the most Western-looking state in today's Near or Middle East. This book begins with the first intimations of the existence of Georgians in ancient Anatolia and ends with today's volatile President Saakashvili. It also deals with the country's struggles with the empires which have tried to control, fragment or even exterminate it.

A cultural history of the myths, magic, and meaning surrounding shapeshifters. Featuring an array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, it explores our secret desire to become something other than human.

"Published in association with the Science Museum, London."

Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present tells the story of an explosive musical phenomenon whose continuing influence on popular culture is dramatic and deep.

Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe charts the human love affair with the heavens in art and astronomy, based on sound science and insightful art and cultural history.

What's your favorite cookie (or biscuit, for any British baking show buffs)? Chocolate chip, ginger spice, or Oreo? Oatmeal-and-raisin, black-and-white, digestive, or florentine? Or do you just prefer the dough? Our choice biscuits and cookies are as diverse as the myriad forms and flavors these chewy treats take, and well they should be. These baked delights have a history as rich as their taste: evidence of biscuit-making dates back to around 4000 BC. In Biscuits and Cookies, Anastasia Edwards explores the delectable past of these versatile snacks, from their earliest beginnings through Middle Eastern baking techniques, to cookies of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages, and on into the New World. From German lebkuchen to the animal cracker (more than half a billion of which are produced each year in the United States alone), from brownies and sugar cookies in the United States to shortbread and buttery tea biscuits in the United Kingdom, to Anzac and Girl-Guide biscuits in New Zealand and Australia, this book is crammed with biscuit and cookie facts, stories, images, and recipes from around the world and across time. And there's no need to steal from the cookie jar.

Gifts of the Gods: A History of Food in Greece is a comprehensive history of Greek food from prehistoric times to the 21st century. The book reveals the many links between ancient and modern, and features numerous recipes, firmly based in Greek tradition, which the reader can try at home.

This sumptuously illustrated volume, edited by eminent war historian Joanna Bourke, offers a comprehensive visual, cultural and historical account of the ways in which armed conflict has been represented in art.

This engaging history brings together the interwoven stories of the original Goths, who sacked the imperial city of Rome and set in motion the decline and fall of the western Roman empire, and the diverse Gothic legacy, a legacy that continues to shape our modern world.

Fairies: A Dangerous History tells the story of the many fairy terrors which lay behind Titania or Tinkerbell.

Victor Hugo (1802-85) is an icon of French culture. He achieved immense success as a poet, dramatist, and novelist, and he was also elected to both houses of the French Parliament. Leading the Romantic campaign against artistic tradition and defying the Second Empire in exile, he became synonymous with the progressive ideals of the French Revolution. His state funeral in Paris made headlines across the world, and his breadth of appeal remains evident today, not least thanks to the popularity of his bestseller, Les Miserables, and its myriad theatrical and cinematic incarnations. This biography provides a comprehensive exploration of Hugo's monumental body of work within the context of his dramatic life. Hugo wrestled with family tragedy and personal misgivings while being pulled into the turmoil of the 19th century, from the fall of Napoleon's Empire to the rise of France's Third Republic.

Cat traces the long relationship between humans and the cosily domestic, yet eerie cat.

The British public school is an iconic institution, traditionally a training ground for the ruling elite and a symbol of national identity. But beyond the elegant architecture and evergreen playing fields is a turbulent history of teenage rebellion, sexual dissidence and political radicalism. This book wades into the wilder shores of public school life over the last three hundred years. It uncovers armed mutinies in the late eighteenth century, a Victorian craze for flagellation, dandy aesthetes of the 1920s, quasi-scientific discourse on masturbation, Communist scares in the 1930s and the salacious tabloid scandals of the present day. Drawing on personal experience, extensive research and public school representations in poetry, school slang, spy films, popular novels and rock music, the author offers a fresh account of upper-class adolescence in Britain and the role of elite private education in shaping youth culture. He shows how this central British institution has inspired a counter-culture of artists, intellectuals and radicals - from Percy Shelley and George Orwell, to Peter Gabriel and Richard Branson - who have rebelled against both the schools and the wider society for which they stand.

At the end of his long, prolific life, Titian was rumored to paint directly on the canvas with his bare hands. He would slide his fingers across bright ridges of oil paint, loosening the colors, blending, blurring, and then bringing them together again. With nothing more than the stroke of a thumb or the flick of a nail, Titian's touch brought the world to life. The clinking of glasses, the clanging of swords, and the cry of a woman's grief. The sensation of hair brushing up against naked flesh, the sudden blush of unplanned desire, and the dry taste of fear in a lost, shadowy place. Titian's art, Maria H. Loh argues in this exquisitely illustrated book, was and is a synesthetic experience. To see is at once to hear, to smell, to taste, and to touch. But while Titian was fully attached to the world around him, he also held the universe in his hands. Like a magician, he could conjure appearances out of thin air. Like a philosopher, his exploration into the very nature of things channelled and challenged the controversial ideas of his day. But as a painter, he created the world anew. Dogs, babies, rubies, and pearls. Falcons, flowers, gloves, and stone. Shepherds, mothers, gods, and men. Paint, canvas, blood, sweat, and tears. In a series of close visual investigations, Loh guides us through the lush, vibrant world of Titian's touch.

With vibrant illustrations and tales of medieval best-sellers, nurserymen's rivalries and changing tastes in the flower bed, this book traces the journey of the rose across the centuries, from battles to bouquets, charting its botanical, religious, literary and artistic history.

In this up-to-date and beautifully illustrated volume, William Sheehan brings our understanding of the planet into clear focus. He deftly traces the history from the earliest observations right up to the most recent explorations using radar and spacecraft.

Richly illustrated throughout, Birch presents a fascinating overview of their cultural and ecological significance, from botany to literature and art, as Anna Lewington looks both at the history of birches and what the future may hold in store for them.

Hinterland provides a close-up view of America's hinterland, populated by towering grain-threshing machines and hunched farmworkers as well as telling the intimate story of a life lived within the hinterland.

Exploring the rich array of films, books, television, music and even video games portraying and inspired by the mafia, this book offers not only a social, economic and political history of the mafia but a new way of understanding our enduring fascination with what lurks behind the sinister omerta of the family business.

Informed by psychology and practical teaching with children, Children Draw is a concise, richly illustrated book, aimed at parents and carers, that explores why children draw and the meaning and value of drawing for youngsters - from toddlers aged two to pre-adolescents aged twelve.

Offering an account of the status of maps and geographical knowledge in the Early Modern world, this work focuses on how early European geographers mapped the territories of the Old World (Africa and South-East Asia).

In Pickles, author Jan Davison explores the cultural and gastronomic history of fermented vegetables, from the earliest civilizations to the twenty-first century.

In Palm Fred Gray portrays the cultural and historical significance of this iconic and controversial plant over thousands of years. Superbly illustrated, this lively and engaging book is the first of its kind.