Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or e...

For sale in CIS only! How do people relate to things? Much has been written about social movements in modern China, but next to nothing is known about the revolution which transformed the texture of everyday life. This is the first book to map the m...

Nearly 1 million American soldiers passed through Australia between 1942 and 1945 as part of America's strategy to recapture the Philippines and defeat Japan. They encountered a country full of reassuring similarities and strange differences. Here wa...

For sale in CIS only! Celebrated by writers from Petrarch to Peter Mayle, Provence's rugged mountains, wild maquis and lavender-filled meadows are world-famous. Historic cities like Arles, Avignon and Aix contain Roman amphitheatres, papal palaces a...

Stories come in many forms, from nursery rhymes and national anthems to poems and praise songs, and from the stories of science to the rituals of religion. They tell us where we come from, and where we belong; how to live and sometimes how to die. Th...

For sale in CIS only! London's influence reaches across the globe. As a port, capital, imperial centre and wartime bastion, it has played an unparalleled part in history. Its contribution to music, fashion and taste knows no boundaries. As the home...

For sale in CIS only! From its origins as a twelfth-century hilltop fortress or kremlin at the confluence of two rivers, Moscow has grown to become a vast city of over eleven million inhabitants. After suffering the ignominy of losing its capital ci...

The Ramlila at Ramnagar, Varanasi is a unique theatrical and religious event, an annual, month-long enactment of the Ramayana story. The performance covers a whole town and involves an entire community. Men, women and children follow the course of th...

For sale in CIS only! The Alps are Europe's highest mountain range; their broad arc stretches right across the centre of the continent, encompassing a wide range of traditions and cultures. In former times the mountains were feared as the realm of w...

Mieke Bal has had a significant impact on every field she has touched, from Old Testament scholarship and narratology to critical methods and visual culture. This brilliant and controversial intellectual invariably performs a high-wire act at the poi...