An illustrated survey of global historical scholarship from the ancient world to the present, for courses in theory and historiography.

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.

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.

So far histories of historiography have concentrated almost exclusively on the West. This is the first book to offer a history of modern historiography from a global perspective. Tracing the transformation of historical writings over the past two and half centuries, the book portrays the transformation of historical writings under the effect of professionalization, which served as a model not only for Western but also for much of non-Western historical studies. At the same time it critically examines the reactions in post-modern and post-colonial thought to established conceptions of scientific historiography. A main theme of the book is how historians in the non-Western world not only adopted or adapted Western ideas, but also explored different approaches rooted in their own cultures.

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.

It is difficult to think of a food more basic, more essential, and more universal than bread. Common to the diets of both the rich and the poor, bread is one of our oldest foods. Loaves and rolls have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and wheat has been found in pits where human settlements flourished 8,000 years ago. Many anthropologists argue that the ability to sow and reap cereals, the grains necessary for making bread, could be one of the main reasons why man settled in communities, and even today the concept of “breaking bread together” is a lasting symbol of the uniting power of a meal. Bread is an innovative mix of traditional history, cultural history, travelogue, and cookbook. William Rubel begins with the amazing invention of bread approximately 20,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and ends by speculating on the ways in which cultural forces and advances in biotechnology may influence the development of bread in the twenty-first century. Rubel shows how simple choices, may be responsible for the widespread preference for wheat over other bread grains and for the millennia-old association of elite dining with white bread. He even provides an analysis of the different components of bread, such as crust and crumb, so that readers may better understand the breads they buy. With many recipes integrated with the text and a glossary covering one hundred breads, Bread goes well beyond the simple choice of white or wheat. Here, general readers will find an approachable introduction to the history of bread and to the many forms that bread takes throughout the world, and bread bakers will discover a history of the craft and new ways of thinking that will inspire experimentation.

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.

Nothing set the world in motion like gold. Between the discovery of California placer gold in 1848 and the rush to Alaska fifty years later, the search for the precious yellow metal accelerated worldwide circulations of people, goods, capital, and technologies. A Global History of Gold Rushes brings together historians of the United States, Africa, Australasia, and the Pacific World to tell the rich story of these nineteenth century gold rushes from a global perspective. Gold was central to the growth of capitalism: it whetted the appetites of empire builders, mobilized the integration of global markets and economies, profoundly affected the environment, and transformed large-scale migration patterns. Together these essays tell the story of fifty years that changed the world.

A new volume in the Global Century series, this masterful history of the world in our time captures the ground-level drama of events and the larger contours of change during a period of global transformation.

In his history of the hot dog, Bruce Kraig examines the origins of the dish, with the arrival of European sausages in the 19th century, and its place in American culture today. He also explore's the US's numerous regional varieties, from New England examples served with Boston Baked Beans to Southern corn dogs.