Tensions between Paris and the provinces have played a significant role in French history. This book examines the effect of the French Revolution in the provinces, on the tensions between provincial interests and those of Paris, and the mediations of different political cultures, which ensured that provincial France made a distinctive contribution to the history of the Revolutionary years.

The Black Death in Europe, from its arrival in 1347-52 through successive waves into the early modern period, has been seriously misunderstood by historians. This revolutionary account provides compelling evidence that the Black Death could have been almost any disease other than the rat-based bubonic plague whose bacillus was discovered in 1894. Since the late nineteenth century, the rat and flea have stood wrongly accused as the agents of transmission and historians and scientists have uncritically imposed the epidemiology of modern plague on the past.

Unshackled from this...

From the Cannes film festival and Brigitte Bardot to virtual film stars and Virginie Ledoyen, French film stars embody glamour and sex appeal and sometimes controversy. This text analyzes the major French stars of the last fifty years, paying detailed attention to screen performance, representation in the popular press, and social and political contexts of their work. Guy Austin's lucid and engaging account charts the making (and in some cases breaking) of the icons of French cinema, including such famous names as Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, and Brigitte Bardot, as well as more...

While Nazi Germany has been the subject of countless scholarly works, gender studies, as a category of analysis, has largely been neglected in interpretative surveys of Nazi Germany. This book examines the female half of the German population during the years of the Third Reich and asks why such a sizeable portion of the population was ready to rally around a movement both blatantly anti-feminist and determined to exclude women from public life. It explains how ordinary Germans translated Nazi beliefs into action and what factors, in addition to gender, influenced women's political choices...

Hundreds of ghettos were created throughout eastern Europe by the Germans and their allies during the Second World War. There have been some studies of the largest ghettos - Warsaw and Lodz - and a few accounts of some of the smaller ones; but very little examination of the ghettos as a whole. This pioneering new history draws heavily on the testimonies of those who suffered in them, making use of a wide range of diaries and memoirs (and exploring the problems inherent in such sources). Other documentary sources - particularly German - are also used, but the intention is to look at the...

The Renaissance was a time of unprecedented change in England. Massive intellectual and cultural developments coincided with considerable social instability and political tensions that would lead to the Civil War. While England was in a process of rethinking its structures and values, and subjecting traditional orthodoxy to fresh and incisive scrutiny, the drama of the period was intimately engaged in these processes. This book focuses on the key debates and events of the Renaissance, such as identity, sexuality, social order, religion, state power and colonialism, and provides an...