Etienne Stockland: 6 books

Nineteenth-century American politician John C. Calhoun occupies a paradoxical place in the history of political thought – and of critical thinking. On one hand, he is remembered as a committed advocate of slavery, consistently espousing views that are now considered indefensible and abhorrent....

Historians of the American Revolution had always seen the struggle for independence either as a conflict sparked by heavyweight ideology, or as a war between opposing social groups acting out of self-interest. In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn begged to differ,...

Joan Scott's work has influenced several generations of historians and helped make the topic of gender central to the way in which the discipline is taught and studied today. At root a new way of conceptualizing capitalist societies, Scott's theories suggest that gender is better understood as a social...

In The Night Battles, Carlo Ginzburg does more than introduce his readers to a novel group of supposed witches – the Benandanti, from the northern Italian province of Friulia. He also invents and deploys new and creative ways of tackling his source material that allow him to move beyond their limitations....

Understanding why revolutions take place when they do, and as they do, is important in itself. Understanding how they are rooted in the societies they upend – and the ways in which those societies share crucial similarities – is arguably even more so. The enduring influence of Jack Goldstone's...

One criticism of history is that historians all too often study it in isolation, failing to take advantage of models and evidence from scholars in other disciplines. This is not a charge that can be laid at the door of Alfred Crosby. His book The Columbian Exchange not only incorporates the results...