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European History
Furnace and Fugue
A Digital Edition of Michael Maier's "Atalanta fugiens" (1618) with Scholarly CommentaryAn Innovative New Open-Access ResourceIn 1618, on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, the German alchemist and physician Michael Maier published Atalanta fugiens, an intriguing and complex musical alchemical emblem book designed to engage the ear, eye, and intellect. The book unfolds as a... More
Music and Urban Life in Baroque Germany
Music and Urban Life in Baroque Germany offers a new narrative of Baroque music, accessible to non–music specialists, in which Tanya Kevorkian defines the era in terms of social dynamics rather than style and genre development. Towns were crucial sites of music-making. Kevorkian explores how... More
Strange Brethren
Refugees, Religious Bonds, and Reformation in Frankfurt, 1554–1608In the sixteenth century, German cities and territories welcomed thousands of refugees fleeing the religious persecution sparked by the Reformation. As Strange Brethren reveals, these Reformation refugees had a profound impact on the societies they entered. Exploring one major destination for... More
Ireland and America
Empire, Revolution, and SovereigntyLooking at America through the Irish prism and employing a comparative approach, leading and emerging scholars of early American and Atlantic history interrogate anew the relationship between imperial reform and revolution in Ireland and America, offering fascinating insights into the imperial... More
Furnace and Fugue
A Digital Edition of Michael Maier's "Atalanta fugiens" (1618) with Scholarly CommentaryAn Innovative New Open-Access ResourceIn 1618, on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, the German alchemist and physician Michael Maier published Atalanta fugiens, an intriguing and complex musical alchemical emblem book designed to engage the ear, eye, and intellect. The book unfolds as a series of... More
The Devil's Art
Divination and Discipline in Early Modern GermanyIn early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Jason... More
Four Fools in the Age of Reason
Laughter, Cruelty, and Power in Early Modern GermanyUnveiling the nearly lost world of the court fools of eighteenth-century Germany, Dorinda Outram shows that laughter was an essential instrument of power. Whether jovial or cruel, mirth altered social and political relations.Outram takes us first to the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, who... More
In the Red and in the Black
Debt, Dishonor, and the Law in France between Revolutions"The most dishonorable act that can dishonor a man." Such is Félix Grandet’s unsparing view of bankruptcy, adding that even a highway robber—who at least "risks his own life in attacking you"—is worthier of respect. Indeed, the France of Balzac’s day was an unforgiving place for borrowers. Each... More
Recollections
The French Revolution of 1848 and Its AftermathAlexis de Tocqueville’s Souvenirs was his extraordinarily lucid and trenchant analysis of the 1848 revolution in France. Despite its bravura passages and stylistic flourishes, however, it was not intended for publication. Written just before Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s 1851 coup prompted the great... More
The Executioner's Journal
Meister Frantz Schmidt of the Imperial City of NurembergDuring a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. The remarkable number of victims, as well as the officially sanctioned context in which they suffered at Schmidt’s hands, was... More
Gun Culture in Early Modern England
Guns had an enormous impact on the social, economic, cultural, and political lives of civilian men, women, and children of all social strata in early modern England. In this study, Lois Schwoerer identifies and analyzes England’s domestic gun culture from 1500 to 1740, uncovering how guns became... More
Hometown Religion
Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern WestphaliaThe pluralization of Christian religion was the defining fact of cultural life in sixteenth-century Europe. Everywhere they took root, ideas of evangelical reform disturbed the unity of religious observance on which political community was founded. By the third quarter of the sixteenth century, one... More
Enlightenment Underground
Radical Germany, 1680-1720Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund": full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow’s seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the... More

The Three Ages of the Italian Renaissance
Mr. Lopez reinterprets the civilization of the High Renaissance in Italy as a dramatic succession of three ages: Youth, 1454-1494; Maturity, 1494-1527; Decline, 1527-1559. In the first period, political and economic stabilization brings forth a mood of confident expectation which expresses itself... More
Crossing the Boundaries of Belief
Geographies of Religious Conversion in Southern Germany, 1648-1800In early modern Germany, religious conversion was a profoundly social and political phenomenon rather than purely an act of private conscience. Because social norms and legal requirements demanded that every subject declare membership in one of the state-sanctioned Christian churches, the act of... More
The Evil Necessity
British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic WorldA fundamental component of Britain’s early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat—it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century.In The Evil Necessity,... More
Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany
With the growth of printing in early modern Germany, crime quickly became a subject of wide public discourse. Sensational crime reports, often featuring multiple murders within families, proliferated as authors probed horrific events for religious meaning. Coinciding with heightened witch panics... More
Mad for God
Bartolome Sanchez, the Secret Messiah of CardeneteConvinced he was the Elijah Messiah, the Spanish peasant Bartolomé Sánchez believed that God had sent him in divine retribution for the crimes committed by the Inquisition and the Church. Sánchez's vocal and intolerable religious deviance quickly landed him in the very court he believed he was sent... More
Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials
In 1631, at the epicenter of the worst excesses of the European witch-hunts, Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit priest, published the Cautio Criminalis, a book speaking out against the trials that were sending thousands of innocent people to gruesome deaths. Spee, who had himself ministered to women accused... More
The Witch in the Western Imagination
In an exciting new approach to witchcraft studies, The Witch in the Western Imagination examines the visual representation of witches in early modern Europe. With vibrant and lucid prose, Lyndal Roper moves away from the typical witchcraft studies on trials, beliefs, and communal dynamics and... More
The Fuggers of Augsburg
Pursuing Wealth and Honor in Renaissance GermanyAs the wealthiest German merchant family of the sixteenth century, the Fuggers have attracted wide scholarly attention. In contrast to the other famous merchant family of the period, the Medici of Florence, however, no English-language work on them has been available until now. The Fuggers of... More

My March to Liberation
A Jewish Boy's Story of Partizan WarfareMy March to Liberation: A Jewish Boy’s Story of Partizan Warfare is the compelling saga of a young Jewish boy coming of age during World War II. Paul Strassmann was fifteen when his family’s life in Trenčín, Slovakia, was turned upside down by the war. His memoir tells one man’s story of what it... More
Witchcraft and the Papacy
An Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman InquisitionWhen Rainer Decker was researching a sensational seventeenth-century German witchcraft trial, he discovered, much to his surprise, that in this case the papacy functioned as a force of skepticism and restraint. His curiosity piqued, he tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a secret Vatican archive... More
"Evil People"
A Comparative Study of Witch Hunts in Swabian Austria and the Electorate of TrierInspired by recent efforts to understand the dynamics of the early modern witch hunt, Johannes Dillinger has produced a powerful synthesis based on careful comparisons. Narrowing his focus to two specific regions—Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier—he provides a nuanced explanation of how... More
The German Discovery of the World
Renaissance Encounters with the Strange and MarvelousCurrent historiography suggests that European nations regarded the New World as an inassimilable "other" that posed fundamental challenges to the accepted ideas of Renaissance culture. The German Discovery of the World presents a new interpretation that emphasizes the ways in which the new lands... More