This is an English translation of important writings on the Thirty Years War by the great Soviet historian B.F. Porshnev. Little is known of the Muscovite contribution to the conflict and Paul Dukes, a specialist in ancien regime Russia, has selected the most valuable areas of Porshnev's archival research to fill a gap in the literature of the 17th century. In placing this work in the context of Porshnev's larger undertaking, Professor Dukes' introduction assesses Porshnev's critics and evaluates his contribution to our understanding of the Thirty Years War and of relations between Eastern...

A History of Everyday Things is a pioneering essay by one of the world's leading cultural historians that sheds light on the origins of the consumer society, and thereby the birth of the modern world. Things that we regard as the everyday objects of consumption have not always been so: how, therefore, have people in the modern world become "prisoners of objects," as Rousseau put it? Daniel Roche answers this fundamental question of historical anthropology, and imaginatively explores the origins of the daily furnishings of modern life.