Abolitionism: A Very Short Introduction
Richard S. Newman
The abolitionist movement launched the global human rights struggle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, redefining the meaning of equality throughout the Atlantic world. In the ...
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Aerial Warfare: A Very Short Introduction
Frank Ledwidge
Aerial warfare has dominated war-making for over 100 years, and despite regular announcements of its demise, it shows no sign of becoming obsolete. Aerial Warfare: A Very Short Introduction ...
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African History: A Very Short Introduction
John Parker and Richard Rathbone
African History: A Very Short Introduction looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented by examining the unity and diversity of ...
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American Business History: A Very Short Introduction
Walter A. Friedman
American Business History: A Very Short Introduction looks at the rise of the American economy from its colonial and frontier beginnings. What made the United States an ...
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American Cultural History: A Very Short Introduction
Eric Avila
American Cultural History: A Very Short Introduction provides a chronological look at American culture—the values, attitudes, beliefs, and myths of a particular society and the ...
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American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction
Andrew Preston
For better or worse, be it militarily, politically, economically, technologically, or culturally, Americans have had a profound impact on the wider world beyond them. American Foreign ...
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American History: A Very Short Introduction
Paul S. Boyer
American History: A Very Short Introduction spans the earliest migrations to the present looking at the United States's failures to live up to its oft-stated ideals. The ...
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American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction
David A. Gerber
American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction examines the many legal efforts to curb immigration and to define who is and is not an American. It looks at immigration from ...
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American Military History: A Very Short Introduction
Joseph T. Glatthaar
American Military History: A Very Short Introduction outlines the forces shaping the American military for the past 400 years. Since the colonial period, the United States has ...
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American Naval History: A Very Short Introduction
Craig L. Symonds
American Naval History: A Very Short Introduction charts the history of the United States Navy from its birth during the American Revolution, through its emergence as a global ...
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The American Revolution: A Very Short Introduction
Robert J. Allison
Between 1760 and 1800, the American people cast off British rule to create a new nation and a radically new form of government based on the idea that people have the right to govern ...
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American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction
Heather Andrea Williams
American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction traces the development of American slavery, from the Portuguese capture of Africans in the 1400s until its abolition following the ...
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The American South: A Very Short Introduction
Charles Reagan Wilson
The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the American South, a distinctive place with a dramatic history. It is a cultural crossroads, where Western Europe met ...
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The American West: A Very Short Introduction
Stephen Aron
The American West: A Very Short Introduction tracks “the West” from the building of the Cahokia Mounds around 900 ad, through early encounters with Europeans, to the Newlands ...
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American Women's History: A Very Short Introduction
Susan Ware
What does U.S. history look like with women at the center of the story? From Pocahantas to military women serving in the Iraq war, American Women's History: A Very Short Introduction ...
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Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction
Karen Radner
Assyria was one of the most influential kingdoms of the Ancient Near East. Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction sketches the history of Assyria from city state to empire, from the ...
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The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction
Amanda H. Podany
The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction describes a momentous time in human history and explains why the ancient Near East is known as the ‘cradle of civilization’. ...
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Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction
Harry Sidebottom
Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction examines all aspects of ancient warfare, from philosophy and strategy to the technical skills needed to fight. How did wars shape ...
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The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction
John Blair
The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction covers the era from the emergence of the earliest English settlements around the year ad 450 to the Norman victory in 1066 ...
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Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction
Madeline Y. Hsu
Asians have migrated to North America for centuries, in search of opportunities and conveyed by increasingly dense, international circuits of trade, labor markets, and family networks. ...
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The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction
David Carrasco
The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction employs the disciplines of history, religious studies, and anthropology as it illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. This VSI looks ...
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Babylonia: A Very Short Introduction
Trevor Bryce
Babylonia: A Very Short Introduction takes us on a journey of more than 2,000 years across the history and civilization of ancient Babylonia, from the emergence of its chief ...
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The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction
Martin Loughlin
The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction explores one of the most unusual constitutional arrangements in the world. It considers the scope and nature of the British ...
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The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction
Ashley Jackson
The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction explores how the British Empire became so powerful and far-reaching. From the eighteenth century until the 1950s the British ...
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Canada: A Very Short Introduction
Donald Wright
Canada: A Very Short Introduction provides an overview of Canada’s history, and its many political and cultural achievements. Canada has never had a single national identity ...
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The Celts: A Very Short Introduction
Barry Cunliffe
The Celts: A Very Short Introduction seeks to reveal the true nature of the Celts. Were they savage and bloodthirsty, or civilized and peaceable? The Celts have long been a ...
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City Planning: A Very Short Introduction
Carl Abbott
City Planning: A Very Short Introduction gives an international overview of progress in city planning over the last century. City planning explores the tension between the idea ...
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The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
Robert J. McMahon
The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction discusses the Cold War, which dominated international life from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall. But how ...
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Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction
Alan Taylor
Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction presents the current scholarly understanding of the subject. During the past generation, historians have broadened that ...
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Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction
Dan Stone
Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction provides a global history of concentration camps, showing the differences and similarities between the various camp systems that ...
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The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction
Matthew Restall and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
The Conquistadors: A very Short Introduction investigates the facts and myths behind the Spanish invasion of the New World. With startling speed, Spanish conquistadors invaded ...
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The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction
Christopher Tyerman
The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction examines this topic by bringing together issues of colonialism, cultural exchange, economic exploitation, and the relationship between ...
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The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction
Richard Curt Kraus
The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction illuminates China's decade-long Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Moving beyond Mao Zedong, this VSI links Beijing's ...
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Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction
Dane Kennedy
Decolonization is the term commonly used to refer to this transition from a world of colonial empires to a world of nation-states in the years after World War II. Decolonization: A Very ...
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Druids: A Very Short Introduction
Barry Cunliffe
The Druids: A Very Short Introduction sets out to answer the questions: Who were the Druids? What do we know about them? Do they still exist today? The Druids first came into ...
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Dynasty: A Very Short Introduction
Jeroen Duindam
Bloodlines have been held as virtually unassailable credentials for leadership, with supreme political power perceived as a family affair across the globe and throughout history. Dynasty: A ...
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Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction
Paul Langford
Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction spans the period from the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688 to Pitt the Younger's defeat in his attempts at ...
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Empire: A Very Short Introduction
Stephen Howe
There is fierce argument, and much speculation, about what has replaced the old territorial empires in world politics. Empire: A Very Short Introduction asks: Do the United States and its ...
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Eugenics: A Very Short introduction
Philippa Levine
The word “eugenics” was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton to express his dream of perfecting the human race by applying the laws of genetic heredity. Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction ...
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Exploration: A Very Short Introduction
Stewart A. Weaver
For as long as there have been civilizations, there has been the urge to venture outside of them, either in search of other civilizations or in search of novelty. But what accounts for this ...
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The First World War: A Very Short Introduction
Michael Howard
The First World War: A Very Short Introduction is a concise history of the ‘Great War’, focusing on why it happened, how it was fought, and why it had the consequences it did. ...
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The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction
R. B. Bernstein
The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and ...
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Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction
Andreas Önnerfors
Freemasonry is one of the world’s oldest, most widespread voluntary organizations. With a strong sense of liberation, moral enlightenment, cosmopolitan openness, and forward-looking ...
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The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
William Doyle
There are many familiar images of the French Revolution garnered from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and Tolstoy, as well as the legends of ‘let them eat cake’ and tricolours. The French ...
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Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction
Bhikhu Parekh
Gandhi was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts. During his time as a lawyer in South Africa he ...
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Garden History: A Very Short Introduction
Gordon Campbell
Gardens take many forms and have a variety of functions. They can serve as spaces of peace and tranquillity, a way to cultivate wildlife, or as places to develop agricultural resources. ...
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The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction
Bryan Cheyette
The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the history of the ghetto, focusing on specific times and places throughout history. Is the ghetto real or ...
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The Great Depression and New Deal: A Very Short Introduction
Eric Rauchway
The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction explores the roots, events, and legacy of the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal. America's post-war ...
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The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction
Martyn Rady
From the 13th to the 20th centuries, Habsburgs ruled much of Central Europe, and for two centuries were rulers of Spain. Through Spain, they acquired lands around the Mediterranean and part ...
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The Harlem Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction
Cheryl A. Wall
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural awakening among African Americans between the two world wars. It was the cultural phase of the “New Negro” movement, a social and political phenomenon ...
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