Product Description: Since before recorded history, people have congregated near water. But as growing populations around the globe continue to flow toward the coasts on an unprecedented scale and climate change raises water levels, our relationship to the sea has begun to take on new and potentially catastrophic dimensions...read more

Product Description: The ancient story of King Goujian, a psychologically complex fifth-century BCE monarch, spoke powerfully to the Chinese during China's turbulent twentieth century. Yet most Americans—even students and specialists of this era—have never heard of Goujian...read more

In this unique collection, the memoirs of eleven historians provide a fascinating portrait of a formative generation of scholars. Born around the time of World War II, these influential historians came of age just before the upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s and helped to transform both their discipline and the broader world of American higher education. The self-inventions they thoughtfully chronicle led, in many cases, to the invention of new fields—including women’s and gender history, social history, and public history—that cleared paths in the academy and made the study of the past more capacious and broadly relevant. In these stories—skillfully compiled and introduced by James Banner and John Gillis—aspiring historians will find inspiration and guidance, experienced scholars will see reflections of their own dilemmas and struggles, and all readers will discover a rare account of how today’s seasoned historians embarked on their intellectual journeys.

An exploration of the human drive to understand and chart the world's islands describes how islands represent spiritual refuge, tranquility, and mystery to people; explores western culture's relationship with islands throughout history, and shares the adventures of explorers and adventurers who contributed to today's Atlantic society. 20,000 first printing.

Product Description: Our whole society may be obsessed with "family values," but as John Gillis points out in this entertaining and eye-opening book, most of our images of "home sweet home" are of very recent vintage. A World of Their Own Making examines our idealized notion of "The Family," a mind-set in which myth and symbol still hold sway...read more

Product Description: Memory is as central to modern politics as politics is central to modern memory. We are so accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to having the past represented to us through museums, historic sites, and public sculpture, that we easily lose sight of the recent origins and diverse meanings of these uniquely modern phenomena...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

John Gillis and the contributors to this volume write about the distinction between militarism and militarization. Militarism, the more conventional concept, means the dominance of warlike values in society. It is typically used to refer to and to blame others, not ourselves. The term is the province of military and political historians. Militarization is a much newer concept. It refers to the process by which civil society organizes itself for the production of violence. The term is useful for a broad range of historians because it encompasses the economic, cultural and psychological preparations for war and their effects on society. The contributors look at the militarization of the United States and Europe in the 12th century. Militarism is considered something archaic that should diminish in modern society. Militarization, on the other hand, is growing. It is now a central feature of the modern world.

Product Description: The history of marriage is commonly thought of as an evolution from cold, impersonal arrangements to new, more affectionate and egalitarian forms of conjugality. For Better, For Worse, the most comprehensive treatment to date of the history of marriage in a major Western society, presents a radically different perspective on both past and present marriages...read more

Product Description: Social Science.