Masculine assertions, whether of verbal command, political power or physical violence, have formed the traditional subject matter of history. This volume combines current discussions in sexual politics with historical analysis to demonstrate that, far from being natural and monolithic, masculinity is an historical and cultural construct, with varied, competing and above all changing forms.

On October 31, 1517 an unknown monk nailed a theological pamphlet to a church door in a small university town and set in motion a process that helped usher in the modern world. Within a few years Luther's ideas had spread like wildfire. His attempts to reform Christianity by returning it to its biblical roots split the Western Church, divided Europe, and polarized people's beliefs.Yet Luther was a deeply flawed human being: a fervent believer tormented by spiritual doubts; a prolif...

Sarah Fleming was a deranged stalker who attempted to murder the wife of a prominent local pastor and was shot dead when the pastor's wife defended herself. That's the official ruling of the police and the local prosecutor as they rule Sarah's death a justifiable homicide resulting from self- defense. Sarah's surviving family and friends refuse to accept that and reach out to Benjo Lane, a tattooed, bearded, reclusive ex- police detective who lives in the middle of nowhere with only a cat ...

I could never have imagined what the future had in store for me and my Castro Street friends when I began a memory book in 1985. This is my memoir of more than ninety people I knew in San Francisco who died of AIDS. It was the decimation of a thriving culture in just over a decade. Who cares? We all should.

From the author of the acclaimed biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, new perspectives on how Luther and others crafted his larger-than-life imageMartin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portraye...

Ethnic conflict is the major form of mass political violence in the world today, and it has been since World War II. Dramatic acts of terrorism and calculated responses to them may distract the attention of policymakers and the public, but ethnic and nationalist conflict continues to pose the greatest challenge to peace and security across the globe. Causes of such conflict and ideas about how to address it are hotly debated in the literature that has emerged over the past fifteen years.

War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes which have led to this development, among them the passing of the two World Wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the centre of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the po...

At a time when men and women were prepared to kill—and be killed—for their faith, the Protestant Reformation tore the Western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's award-winning history brilliantly recreates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars, and politicians—from the zealous Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses to the polemical John Calvin to the radical Igantius Loyola, from the tortured Thomas Cranm...

Saint Augustine is one of the most influential figures in all of Christianity, yet his path to sainthood was by no means assured. Born in AD 354 to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Augustine spent the first thirty years of his life struggling to understand the nature of God and his world. He learned about Christianity as a child but was never baptized, choosing instead to immerse himself in the study of rhetoric, Manicheanism, and then Neoplatonism—all the while indulging in a life o...

There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans’s history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitl...

**The #1 New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2017“Eminently readable but thick with import . . . Grant hits like a Mack truck of knowledge.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates*, The Atlantic***Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant.Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. Al...

**AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain, a revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes—the consequences of which still resonate today**In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrop...