{"title":"Early Modern","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"the-reformation-diarmaid-macculloch","title":"The Reformation — Diarmaid MacCulloch","description":"\u003cp\u003eMacCulloch's history of the Reformation is the standard work — comprehensive, richly detailed, and written with the conviction that ideas matter as much as interests. He covers the full range of Protestant movements, from Luther's German reformation through Calvin's Geneva to the English break with Rome, while also taking the Catholic response seriously as a genuine reforming force rather than mere reaction. The sheer scope is managed without sacrificing the texture of individual argument and conflict.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534705090887,"sku":null,"price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_b46ab4ec-1c91-4e6e-9480-6ec93d710455.jpg?v=1776268096"},{"product_id":"the-anarchy-william-dalrymple","title":"The Anarchy — William Dalrymple","description":"\u003cp\u003eDalrymple's subject is the East India Company — specifically, how a joint-stock trading corporation came to replace the Mughal Empire as the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent. The book is meticulous in documenting the Company's methods: bribery, military coercion, exploitation of Mughal political collapse, and the systematic extraction of Bengal's wealth. The argument is that the Company's conquest of India was not British imperial policy but corporate opportunism operating in a vacuum of legitimate authority.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534705221959,"sku":null,"price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_a40e6efd-f418-4989-bf8e-9750469bdf04.webp?v=1776267930"},{"product_id":"white-mughals-william-dalrymple","title":"White Mughals — William Dalrymple","description":"\u003cp\u003eDalrymple reconstructs the love affair and marriage between James Kirkpatrick, the British Resident at Hyderabad, and Khair un-Nissa, a Mughal noblewoman, as a way of examining a particular moment in colonial history — before the hardening of racial attitudes that would characterise the nineteenth century — when accommodation between British officials and Indian culture was both possible and common. The book is a biography, a love story, and a work of cultural history simultaneously.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534705549639,"sku":null,"price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/view_archive_7538f334-830d-4a16-9183-eca047bd66a4.jpg?v=1773853568"},{"product_id":"the-last-mughal-william-dalrymple","title":"The Last Mughal — William Dalrymple","description":"\u003cp\u003eDalrymple focuses on the 1857 rebellion through the figure of Bahadur Shah Zafar — the last Mughal emperor, a poet and mystic in his eighties who found himself the reluctant figurehead of an uprising he could not control. The book draws on Urdu and Persian sources rarely used in English-language accounts, which allows a view of events from inside Delhi that substantially complicates the familiar British narrative of a mutiny suppressed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534706467143,"sku":null,"price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_cc3eefeb-d48c-4c2d-ab38-faba696dfbcc.jpg?v=1776267739"},{"product_id":"return-of-a-king-william-dalrymple","title":"Return of a King — William Dalrymple","description":"\u003cp\u003eDalrymple reconstructs the First Afghan War of 1839-42, in which Britain invaded Afghanistan to install a compliant ruler, occupied Kabul for two years, and then retreated in a catastrophe that killed almost all of a force of sixteen thousand. Drawing on Afghan as well as British sources — including a recently discovered Afghan epic poem about the war — he shows the conflict from both sides and draws parallels with later foreign interventions that are impossible to ignore.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534706499911,"sku":null,"price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/9781408831595-L.jpg?v=1773853567"},{"product_id":"pursuit-of-glory-tim-blanning","title":"Pursuit of Glory — Tim Blanning","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlanning covers Europe between 1648 and 1815 — from the Peace of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna — in a history that takes culture, commerce, and demography as seriously as war and politics. The book is structured around the concept of public culture: the growth of newspapers, concert halls, public opinion, and the associated idea that rulers required something more than dynastic legitimacy to govern. It is a history of the forces that made the French Revolution both possible and, in Blanning's view, not inevitable.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534706696519,"sku":null,"price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/view_archive_2dafbb3c-b267-4f60-a15b-eac7a653a869.jpg?v=1773853570"},{"product_id":"the-borgias-paul-strathern","title":"The Borgias — Paul Strathern","description":"\u003cp\u003eStrathern examines the Borgia family — Rodrigo, who became Pope Alexander VI, and his children Cesare and Lucrezia — not as Gothic villains but as exemplary Renaissance power-brokers operating in a system where the papacy was a political institution like any other. The book is attentive to the gap between contemporary reputation and documented fact, and to the ways in which the Borgias were both products and creators of the political culture Machiavelli was simultaneously theorising.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534706762055,"sku":null,"price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_1841b408-b506-42a0-9936-4151a425a779.jpg?v=1776257500"},{"product_id":"suleiman-the-magnificent-christopher-de-bellaigue","title":"Suleiman the Magnificent — Christopher de Bellaigue","description":"\u003cp\u003eDe Bellaigue examines Suleiman's reign — the longest and in many respects the most consequential of the Ottoman sultans — as a study in the relationship between political power and cultural achievement. The book traces the sultan's military campaigns into Europe, the legal codification for which he was known in the Ottoman world, and the personal relationships — with Ibrahim Pasha, with Roxelana — that shaped and ultimately undermined his court.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534707188039,"sku":null,"price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_25997fb3-ef95-4097-b8d5-ad962ff924b9.jpg?v=1776257418"},{"product_id":"magna-carta-dan-jones","title":"Magna Carta — Dan Jones","description":"\u003cp\u003eJones tells the story of how a group of rebellious barons extracted a charter of liberties from King John in 1215, and of how that document — largely forgotten within years of its sealing — was gradually transformed into the founding text of English constitutional history. The book is as much about the afterlife of Magna Carta as about the document itself, asking why subsequent generations needed to believe in its significance and what they made it mean.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534707515719,"sku":null,"price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_ca4d52f9-3450-4bcd-99d7-d561a652b7ca.jpg?v=1776257205"},{"product_id":"the-shortest-history-of-europe-john-hirst","title":"The Shortest History of Europe — John Hirst","description":"\u003cp\u003eHirst argues that European civilisation is the product of three distinct inheritances — Greek philosophy, Roman law and governance, and Christianity — and that the history of the continent is largely the story of how these three traditions have combined, conflicted, and evolved. Unapologetically a work of synthesis, it is a book for readers who want an analytical framework rather than a detailed account, and it delivers one with economy and precision.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53534707745095,"sku":null,"price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_bfeb907d-2048-48b1-8746-bb1ebc403e02.jpg?v=1776257055"},{"product_id":"the-tudors-gj-meyer","title":"The Tudors — G.J. Meyer","description":"\u003cp\u003eMeyer's history of the Tudor dynasty takes a deliberately sceptical view of its subjects — particularly of Henry VIII, whose reputation for charm and magnificence he finds largely a product of royal propaganda and subsequent mythology. The book covers all five Tudor monarchs and is particularly strong on the human cost of the English Reformation: the executions, the suppressions, the violence done to a country's religious culture in the course of a king's need for a legitimate heir. Meyer is American, which gives him a useful distance from the national pride that can soften English accounts of the same material.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003e'Meyer writes with the confidence and clarity of the best popular history. The Tudors is a welcome corrective to the romantic myths that still surround the period.' — \u003cem\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/em\u003e. 'Compelling and authoritative.' — \u003cem\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529139015,"sku":null,"price":12.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_eac6d2ce-9917-4100-aa7c-b83ee5800a5d.webp?v=1776631939"},{"product_id":"iron-kingdom-christopher-clark","title":"Iron Kingdom — Christopher Clark","description":"\u003cp\u003eClark's history of Prussia traces the Hohenzollern state from its origins in the seventeenth century to its forced dissolution in 1947, arguing that Prussia was neither the inevitable precursor of Nazism nor simply a victim of historical misrepresentation. The book is comprehensive — military, cultural, administrative, and constitutional — and is particularly acute on how Prussian identity was constructed and reconstructed across three centuries of political upheaval. The most important European state that modern readers know least about, here given the history it deserves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003eWinner of the \u003cstrong\u003eWolfson History Prize\u003c\/strong\u003e. 'A masterpiece of European history. Clark writes with rare combination of scholarly depth and narrative command.' — \u003cem\u003eNiall Ferguson\u003c\/em\u003e. 'The definitive history of Prussia.' — \u003cem\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529171783,"sku":null,"price":18.04,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_af6af9f4-2c29-4786-a08a-e07878ff9081.jpg?v=1776631785"},{"product_id":"1688-the-first-modern-revolution-steve-pincus","title":"1688: The First Modern Revolution — Steve Pincus","description":"\u003cp\u003ePincus argues against the standard view of the Glorious Revolution as a conservative, bloodless transfer of power, presenting it instead as a genuine revolution — contested, violent, and transformative — that established the template for modern state formation. Drawing on English, Dutch, and French sources, he reconstructs the ideological conflict between two competing visions of the English state and shows that the outcome was far from predetermined. The book rewrites one of the most misunderstood events in English political history.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003e'A landmark work of revisionist history. Pincus forces us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about 1688.' — \u003cem\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/em\u003e. 'Brilliant and iconoclastic.' — \u003cem\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/em\u003e. 'The most important book on seventeenth-century England in a generation.' — \u003cem\u003eDavid Cannadine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529302855,"sku":null,"price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_186b898f-5bd7-4074-8439-3a3860f3eba1.jpg?v=1776629073"},{"product_id":"the-enlightenment-a-very-short-introduction-roy-porter","title":"The Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction — Roy Porter","description":"\u003cp\u003ePorter compresses the Enlightenment into a tight account that is attentive to both its internal diversity and its lasting consequences. He resists the tendency to reduce it to a single narrative — reason versus religion, progress versus tradition — and presents instead a movement of considerable heterogeneity, in which common assumptions about improvement and evidence were applied to very different ends. An ideal entry point to a subject whose influence on the modern world is difficult to overstate, and whose internal contradictions remain unresolved.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003ePart of Oxford University Press's celebrated \u003cem\u003eVery Short Introductions\u003c\/em\u003e series. Roy Porter was one of the foremost historians of the Enlightenment in Britain; this was among his final works before his death in 2002. 'Porter at his most lucid and illuminating.' — \u003cem\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529335623,"sku":null,"price":20.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_9a2d35b2-ee3c-4adc-9472-6eceb273f22c.jpg?v=1776629271"},{"product_id":"empires-of-the-sea-roger-crowley","title":"Empires of the Sea — Roger Crowley","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrowley reconstructs the struggle between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires for control of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century, focusing on three episodes — the siege of Rhodes, the siege of Malta, and the battle of Lepanto in 1571 — as nodes of a longer conflict that determined which civilisation would dominate the inland sea. The book is written with the pace of a thriller and the research of a scholarly history, and it recovers a contest that has been largely obscured by the more familiar story of Reformation Europe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003e'Crowley is one of the finest writers of history working today. Empires of the Sea is gripping from first page to last.' — \u003cem\u003eDan Jones\u003c\/em\u003e. 'Brilliantly researched and brilliantly told. A masterclass in narrative history.' — \u003cem\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529401159,"sku":null,"price":12.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_8b6ffb6d-54a0-4d89-907b-dbe6f549428c.jpg?v=1776628976"},{"product_id":"nathaniels-nutmeg-giles-milton","title":"Nathaniel's Nutmeg — Giles Milton","description":"\u003cp\u003eMilton tells the story of the English attempt to secure a share of the East Indies spice trade in the early seventeenth century, centred on the island of Run — a tiny source of nutmeg whose possession was considered worth trading Manhattan. The book is a microhistory of colonial violence, commercial competition, and the extraordinary human cost of the spice trade, told with novelistic detail and without romantic illusion. The English lost Run, but the Dutch — who got it — lost New York. The exchange haunted both empires for decades.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003e'One of the most gripping works of historical non-fiction I have ever read. Milton is a master of the microhistory.' — \u003cem\u003eThe Times\u003c\/em\u003e. 'A remarkable book — part adventure story, part colonial horror, entirely compelling.' — \u003cem\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529433927,"sku":null,"price":14.24,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_74abf923-1aba-422b-9678-a0f8c584006f.webp?v=1776628881"},{"product_id":"the-swerve-stephen-greenblatt","title":"The Swerve — Stephen Greenblatt","description":"\u003cp\u003eGreenblatt tells the story of how a Florentine humanist named Poggio Bracciolini found, in a German monastery in 1417, a copy of Lucretius's \u003cem\u003eDe Rerum Natura\u003c\/em\u003e — an Epicurean poem arguing for a universe of atoms, without divine purpose, in which pleasure rather than asceticism was the appropriate human response. The poem had been lost for over a thousand years. Greenblatt traces its recovery, its transmission through Renaissance Europe, and its long influence on the development of modern secular thought, from Montaigne to Jefferson.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003eWinner of the \u003cstrong\u003ePulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction\u003c\/strong\u003e and the \u003cstrong\u003eNational Book Award\u003c\/strong\u003e. 'A magnificent book — learned, witty, and deeply pleasurable.' — \u003cem\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/em\u003e. 'Greenblatt has written a detective story about ideas, and it is a wonder.' — \u003cem\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529466695,"sku":null,"price":14.24,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_3fd4b2d7-8df2-4c1c-8235-f6393850f6da.jpg?v=1776628146"},{"product_id":"contested-will-james-shapiro","title":"Contested Will — James Shapiro","description":"\u003cp\u003eShapiro examines not Shakespeare's plays but the question of who wrote them — tracing the history of the authorship controversy from its origins in the nineteenth century and analysing why the question has proved so persistent. The book is less a defence of Shakespeare's authorship than a history of the doubters and their motivations: what it reveals about Romantic notions of literary genius, about the need to project biographical experience into works of art, and about the peculiar difficulty of knowing anything about a man who left so little personal record behind him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp class=\"epoch-endorsement\"\u003e'Brilliant and fascinating — a history of a historical question that illuminates the entire culture of authorship.' — \u003cem\u003eJames Wood, The New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e. 'Shapiro writes with wit and precision about one of literature's most intractable debates.' — \u003cem\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Epoch Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53734529597767,"sku":null,"price":14.24,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0967\/9152\/7751\/files\/rn-image_picker_lib_temp_b4e943c9-7813-4e7d-ae55-b8d50faec941.jpg?v=1776627855"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.epochbooks.co.uk\/collections\/early-modern.oembed","provider":"Epoch Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}