What Is Global History?
What Is Global History?

Author: Sebastian Conrad

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-08-29

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0691178194

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The first comprehensive overview of the innovative new discipline of global history Until very recently, historians have looked at the past with the tools of the nineteenth century. But globalization has fundamentally altered our ways of knowing, and it is no longer possible to study nations in isolation or to understand world history as emanating from the West. This book reveals why the discipline of global history has emerged as the most dynamic and innovative field in history—one that takes the connectedness of the world as its point of departure, and that poses a fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know it. What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How do we write a global history that is not Eurocentric yet does not fall into the trap of creating new centrisms? How can historians compare different societies and establish compatibility across space? What are the politics of global history? This in-depth and accessible book also explores the limits of the new paradigm and even its dangers, the question of whom global history should be written for, and much more. Written by a leading expert in the field, What Is Global History? shows how, by understanding the world's past as an integrated whole, historians can remap the terrain of their discipline for our globalized present.

The Book
The Book

Author: F. J. F. Suarez

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-10-24

Total Pages: 937

ISBN-13: 0191668753

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A concise edition of the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to the Book, this book features the 51 articles from the Companion plus 3 brand new chapters in one affordable volume. The 54 chapters introduce readers to the fascinating world of book history. Including 21 thematic studies on topics such as writing systems, the ancient and the medieval book, and the economics of print, as well as 33 regional and national histories of 'the book', offering a truly global survey of the book around the world, the Oxford History of the Book is the most comprehensive work of its kind. The three new articles, specially commissioned for this spin-off, cover censorship, copyright and intellectual property, and book history in the Caribbean and Bermuda. All essays are illustrated throughout with reproductions, diagrams, and examples of various typographical features. Beautifully produced and hugely informative, this is a must-have for anyone with an interest in book history and the written word.

Global Intellectual History
Global Intellectual History

Author: Samuel Moyn

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-06-25

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0231160488

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Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront the challenges and controversies that may arise, this original resource explains the concepts, concerns, practice, and promise of "global intellectual history," featuring essays by leading scholars on various approaches that are taking shape across the discipline. The contributors to Global Intellectual History explore the different ways in which one can think about the production, dissemination, and circulation of "global" ideas and ask whether global intellectual history can indeed produce legitimate narratives. They discuss how intellectuals and ideas fit within current conceptions of global frames and processes of globalization and proto-globalization, and they distinguish between ideas of the global and those of the transnational, identifying what each contributes to intellectual history. A crucial guide, this collection sets conceptual coordinates for readers eager to map an emerging area of study.

Avocado
Avocado

Author: Jeff Miller

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2020-04-13

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1789142407

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The avocado is arguably the most iconic food of the twenty-first century. In less than one-hundred years, it has gone from a little-known regional delicacy to global embrace and social media fame. This may seem like an astounding trajectory for a fruit that isn’t sweet, that gets bitter when it is cooked, and has perhaps the oddest texture of any fruit or vegetable. But it is precisely the avocado’s contradictions that have contributed to its ascent: the idea that this rich and delicious fruit is also healthy despite being fatty and energy-dense grants it unicorn status with modern eaters, especially millennials. Through lively anecdotes, colorful pictures, and delicious recipes, Jeff Miller explores the meteoric rise of the avocado, from its coevolution with the megaherbivores of the Pleistocene to its acceptance by the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico, to its current dominance of food consumers’ imaginations.

What is Global History?
What is Global History?

Author: Pamela Kyle Crossley

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0745633013

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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. Others are social and cultural, touching upon issues of migration, trade, language development and differentiation, institutions of enslavement and of freedom, traditions of marriage and child-rearing, the emergence of large-scale political organization from early kingdoms to vast empires, republics and federations, and the management of war and peace. To deal with such challenging issues, global historians draw upon new techniques of analysis and comparison. But they also continue venerable traditions, inherited from the earliest civilizations, of narrating the past on the most comprehensive and significant scale possible. This book examines the long search for an integrated human story, and particularly the points at which rapid changes of philosophy and perspective in the twentieth century transformed the historical disciplines. It provides the perfect introduction to global history for students and scholars alike.

Mushroom
Mushroom

Author: Cynthia D. Bertelsen

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2013-09-15

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1780232195

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Known as the meat of the vegetable world, mushrooms have their ardent supporters as well as their fierce detractors. Hobbits go crazy over them, while Diderot thought they should be “sent back to the dung heap where they are born.” In Mushroom, Cynthia D. Bertelsen examines the colorful history of these divisive edible fungi. As she reveals, their story is fraught with murder and accidental death, hunger and gluttony, sickness and health, religion and war. Some cultures equate them with the rottenness of life while others delight in cooking and eating them. And then there are those “magic” mushrooms, which some people link to ancient religious beliefs. To tell this story, Bertelsen travels to the nineteenth century, when mushrooms entered the realm of haute cuisine after millennia of being picked from the wild for use in everyday cooking and medicine. She describes how this new demand drove entrepreneurs and farmers to seek methods for cultivating mushrooms, including experiments in domesticating the highly sought after but elusive truffles, and she explores the popular pastime of mushroom hunting and includes numerous historic and contemporary recipes. Packed with images of mushrooms from around the globe, this savory book will be essential reading for fans of this surprising, earthy fungus.

Coffee
Coffee

Author: Jonathan Morris

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1789140269

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Most of us can’t make it through morning without our cup (or cups) of joe, and we’re not alone. Coffee is a global beverage: it’s grown commercially on four continents and consumed enthusiastically on all seven—and there is even an Italian espresso machine on the International Space Station. Coffee’s journey has taken it from the forests of Ethiopia to the fincas of Latin America, from Ottoman coffee houses to “Third Wave” cafés, and from the simple coffee pot to the capsule machine. In Coffee: A Global History, Jonathan Morris explains both how the world acquired a taste for this humble bean, and why the beverage tastes so differently throughout the world. Sifting through the grounds of coffee history, Morris discusses the diverse cast of caffeinated characters who drank coffee, why and where they did so, as well as how it was prepared and what it tasted like. He identifies the regions and ways in which coffee has been grown, who worked the farms and who owned them, and how the beans were processed, traded, and transported. Morris also explores the businesses behind coffee—the brokers, roasters, and machine manufacturers—and dissects the geopolitics linking producers to consumers. Written in a style as invigorating as that first cup of Java, and featuring fantastic recipes, images, stories, and surprising facts, Coffee will fascinate foodies, food historians, baristas, and the many people who regard this ancient brew as a staple of modern life.

Ice Cream
Ice Cream

Author: Laura B. Weiss

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1861899920

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Be it soft-serve, gelato, frozen custard, Indian kulfi or Israeli glida, some form of cold, sweet ice cream treat can found throughout the world in restaurants and home freezers. Though ice cream was once considered a food for the elite, it has evolved into one of the most successful mass-market products ever developed. In Ice Cream, food writer Laura B. Weiss takes the reader on a vibrant trip through the history of ice cream from ancient China to modern-day Tokyo in order to tell the lively story of how this delicious indulgence became a global sensation. Weiss tells of donkeys wooed with ice cream cones, Good Humor-loving World War II-era German diplomats, and sundaes with names such as “Over the Top” and “George Washington.” Her account is populated with Chinese emperors, English kings, former slaves, women inventors, shrewd entrepreneurs, Italian immigrant hokey-pokey ice cream vendors, and gourmand American First Ladies. Today American brands dominate the world ice cream market, but vibrant dessert cultures like Italy’s continue to thrive, and new ones, like Japan’s, flourish through unique variations. Weiss connects this much-loved food with its place in history, making this a book sure to be enjoyed by all who are beckoned by the siren song of the ice cream truck.

A Global History of Runaways
A Global History of Runaways

Author: Marcus Rediker

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0520304365

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During global capitalism's long ascent from 1600–1850, workers of all kinds—slaves, indentured servants, convicts, domestic workers, soldiers, and sailors—repeatedly ran away from their masters and bosses, with profound effects. A Global History of Runaways, edited by Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty, and Matthias van Rossum, compares and connects runaways in the British, Danish, Dutch, French, Mughal, Portuguese, and American empires. Together these essays show how capitalism required vast numbers of mobile workers who would build the foundations of a new economic order. At the same time, these laborers challenged that order—from the undermining of Danish colonization in the seventeenth century to the igniting of civil war in the United States in the nineteenth.