During the first years of the pandemic, the political mainstream agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life. But social science reveals the true human cost of this policy.The Covid Consensusprovides an internationalist-left perspective on the world’s Covid-19 response, which has had devastating consequences for democratic rights and the poor worldwide. As the fortunes of the richest soared, nationwide shut...

Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award'Astonishing, staggering' Ben Okri, Daily TelegraphA groundbreaking new history that will transform our view of West AfricaBy the time of the 'Scramble for Africa' in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally conn...

The region between the river Senegal and Sierra Leone saw the first trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. Drawing on many new sources, Toby Green challenges current quantitative approaches to the history of the slave trade. New data on slave origins can show how and why Western African societies responded to Atlantic pressures. Green argues that answering these questions requires a cultural framework and uses the idea of creolization - the formation of mixed cultural communi...

4 CITIES, 4 LIVES, 1 CRIMEÖ In Madrid, an Argentinian bookseller gets caught up in the scheme of an American professor to prevent an appalling crime. Her sidekicks soon include a Gambian migrant in Paris and a Spanish waitress in London. Seeking some sort of companionship in their exiles, the four characters join forces in a quest that becomes a dangerous obsession. All four lives seem to be fatefully connected. But how to get people to take the crime seriously if it does not yet exist? In...

Cities and Citadels provides an urgent update of archaeology’s engagement with economic theory.Recent events have forced a major reassessment of economic thinking. In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession and the economic impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the world finds itself in unprecedented times. Even though archaeology typically concerns itself with the remote past, it must also help us understand how we got to where we are today. This book takes up the challenging new...

'A beautiful book, story, piece of history. From the haunting tones of the flamenco to a country ravaged by fanaticism. Hardly a day goes past since finishing this book that I don't think about some aspect of it. One of the best books I have read in a long time' Real Reader Review, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐Granada's cobbled streets resonate with music and secrets and Sonia Cameron is here to dance. She knows nothing of the city's past. But in a quiet café, a chance conversation an...

A series of lectures on the ethnic and social fusion that makes Brazil the country it is today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

For most Westerners, Latin America is the junior partner of the NewWorld, an underdeveloped sibling to the US and Canada. The vibrancy ofits culture is unquestionable, but the Spanish and Portuguese-speakingcountries of Central and South America are easily typecast andoverlooked as exotic, dangerous, and decidedly not part of the FirstWorld. In his provocative and powerful book, Oscar Guardiola-Riverashows how Latin America and its people are makin...

The second edition of this accessible study of Mexico includes two new features: an examination of cultural developments since Independence from Spain in 1821 and a discussion of contemporary issues up to the time of publication. Several new plates with captions expand the thematic coverage in the book. The updated edition examines the administration of Vicente Fox, who came to power with the elections of 2000. The new sections reinforce the importance of Mexico's long and disparate histor...

As the British, French and Spanish Atlantic empires were torn apart in the Age of Revolutions, Portugal steadily pursued reforms to tie its American, African and European territories more closely together. Eventually, after a period of revival and prosperity, the Luso-Brazilian world also succumbed to revolution, which ultimately resulted in Brazil's independence from Portugal. The first of its kind in the English language to examine the Portuguese Atlantic World in the period from 1750 to...

During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, vibrant port cities became home to thousands of Africans in transit. Free and enslaved blacks alike crafted the necessary materials to support transoceanic commerce and labored as stevedores, carters, sex workers, and boarding-house keepers. Even though Africans continued to be exchanged as chattel, urban frontiers allowed a number of enslaved blacks to negotiate the right to hire out their own time, often greatly enhancing their autonomy within ...

The Spanish are reputed to be amongst Europe's most voluble people. So why have they kept silent about the terrors of the Spanish Civil War and the rule of dictator Generalísimo Francisco Franco? The appearance - sixty years after that war ended - of mass graves containing victims of Franco's death squads has finally broken what Spaniards call "the pact of forgetting". At this charged moment, Giles Tremlett embarked on a journey around Spain - and through Spanish history. Tremlett's journe...