Tea remains the world's most popular commercial drink today, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India. In analyzing the global competition between Chinese and Indian tea, An...

In the spring of 1792, President George Washington chose "Mad" Anthony Wayne to defend America from a potentially devastating threat. Native forces had decimated the standing army and Washington needed a champion to open the country stretching from t...

As the slave trade brought Europeans, Africans, and Americans into contact, diseases were traded along with human lives. Manuel Barcia examines the battle waged against disease, where traders fought against loss of profits while enslaved Africans fou...

This comprehensive survey of Catholic history in what became the United States spans nearly five hundred years, from the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries to the present. Distinguished historian Leslie Tentler explores lay religious practice...

From the late 19th century to the Second World War, American painters adapted Impressionism to their own ends, shaping one of the most enduring, complex, and contradictory styles of art ever produced in the United States. This comprehensive book pres...

In the first book devoted to Anne Brigman (1869-1950), Kathleen Pyne traces the groundbreaking photographer's life from Hawai'i to the Sierra and elsewhere in California, revealing how her photographs emerged from her experience of local place and cu...

From noted environmental historian Carolyn Merchant, this book focuses on the original concept of the Anthropocene first proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in their foundational 2000 paper. It undertakes a broad investigation into the ways...

This book is a groundbreaking evaluation of the interwoven trajectories of the people, such as itinerant ship-workers and colonial magistrates, who built France's first empire between 1680 and 1780 in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. These imperial su...

Some of the most outstanding examples of world architecture, such as the Mosque of Cordoba, the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, the Giralda tower in Seville, and the Alhambra Palace in Granada, belong to the Western Islamic tradition. Th...

Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), like all ambitious artists, imitated eminent predecessors. What set him apart was his lifelong and multifaceted focus on Michelangelo Buonarroti – the master of the previous age. Bernini's Michelangelo is the first co...