Lawrence Stone Lectures

"Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, The University of Memphis, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change" Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton). The paradox of racial inequality in Barack Obama's America Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner's famous remark "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama's America and how President Obama intends to deal with it. Obama's journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions-particularly between blacks and whites-remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama's evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama's place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency. Does Obama's presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America. "Distinguished civil rights historian and sociologist Sugrue (Sweet Land of Liberty) follows Barack Obama's intellectual journey and political education from his student years in the late 1970s through his first years as president, offering an insightful and fresh glimpse of Obama through three lenses--as intellectual, politician, and policy maker--and with three essays. While David Remnick's comprehensive The Bridge bears thematic similarities, Sugrue offers a pithy and readable survey of some of the same terrain--the path that 'rooted the rootless Hawaiian in the history of the Southern freedom struggle' and the formation of his politics that favored 'reconciliation over confrontation.' Sugrue addresses Obama's Chicago years and the evolution of his thinking on class. And the final essay assesses Obama as candidate and president. Particularly noteworthy is Sugrue's attention to Obama's post-Jeremiah Wright controversy speech in 2008 ('the most learned disquisition on race from a major political figure ever') and a splendid illumination of the roles played by books (particularly the work of William Julius Wilson), by mentors (political and clerical), and by family (especially Michelle Obama's) in Obama's ascent." "His work adds missing nuance and complexity to the discussion of the history of race and its present societal scars. Readers looking for simple answers or reasons to believe we are in a postracial America will be severely disappointed, as they should be. Readers willing to engage the complexity of race in contemporary American life and politics will find Sugrue's observations insightful and, at times, appropriately depressing."---Amy Black, Books & Culture "Sugrue examines Obama's race speech during the presidential campaign that reflected the impulses of 'a more perfect union' and explores major themes of racial divisions, including the moral equivalence of black anger and white backlash."---Vernon Ford, Booklist "Thomas Sugrue's fine book offers a cogent and powerful explanation for [the] mismatch between exp

Frederick Cooper is professor of history at New York University. His many books include Empires in World History and Citizenship between Empire and Nation (both Princeton). A succinct and comprehensive history of the development of citizenship from the Roman Empire to the present day Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference offers a concise and sweeping overview of citizenship's complex evolution, from ancient Rome to the present. Political leaders and thinkers still debate, as they did in Republican Rome, whether the presumed equivalence of citizens is compatible with cultural diversity and economic inequality. Frederick Cooper presents citizenship as "claim-making"--the assertion of rights in a political entity. What those rights should be and to whom they should apply have long been subjects for discussion and political mobilization, while the kind of political entity in which claims and counterclaims have been made has varied over time and space. Citizenship ideas were first shaped in the context of empires. The relationship of citizenship to "nation" and "empire" was hotly debated after the revolutions in France and the Americas, and claims to "imperial citizenship" continued to be made in the mid-twentieth century. Cooper examines struggles over citizenship in the Spanish, French, British, Ottoman, Russian, Soviet, and American empires, and he explains the reconfiguration of citizenship questions after the collapse of empires in Africa and India. He explores the tension today between individualistic and social conceptions of citizenship, as well as between citizenship as an exclusionary notion and flexible and multinational conceptions of citizenship. Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference is a historically based reflection on some of the most fundamental issues facing human societies in the past and present. "In this broad and brilliant book, Cooper examines a politically burning issue and impressively shows that from the early Roman Empire onward, the solidarity of citizenship has always coexisted with social hierarchy and political oligarchy. All around the world today, citizenship and the idea of belonging to some sort of political collectivity continue to be subjects of debate and struggle."-Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University of Berlin "Armed with a cosmopolitan range of historical inquiry, Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference profoundly deepens our understanding of the character of citizenship. Taking readers on a fascinating journey that extends from ancient Greece and Rome through early modern empires to the postcolonial nation-state, this book deftly examines the tensions between various ideals of citizenship and the lived reality of social differentiation within and between states."-Richard Bourke, author of Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke "From the Roman Republic to the present, citizenship has always been circumscribed and stratified-but it has also afforded what Cooper calls 'the right to claim rights.' Whether under empire or nation, citizenship has brought forth necessary contention, with never fully predictable outcomes. The relevance of Cooper's breathtakingly ambitious and masterfully told story to our age of inequality within and among nations is unmistakable."-Samuel Moyn, Yale University "Expansive in its intellectual terrain and efficient in its pointed insights, this incisive book is required reading for all scholars of citizenship. Cooper distills the complex layers of Roman citizenship into a compelling narrative about empire and membership that he threads through a discussion of modern and contemporary citizenship in colonial and postcolonial nation-states. Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference offers a clarifying lens for understanding this critical and multifaceted concept."-Elizabeth F. Cohen, Syracuse University "This is a significant book by a master historian. It represents the accumulated wisdom of a long career spent thinking dee

"One of Times Higher Education's Best Books of 2018" "One of the Financial Times' Summer Books of 2019: History" Christopher Clark is the Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power, and Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. He lives in Cambridge, England. From the author of the national bestseller The Sleepwalkers, a book about how the exercise of power is shaped by different concepts of time This groundbreaking book presents new perspectives on how the exercise of power is shaped by different notions of time. Acclaimed historian Christopher Clark draws on four key figures from German history-Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Adolf Hitler-to look at history through a temporal lens and ask how historical actors and their regimes embody unique conceptions of time. Inspired by the insights of Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, two pioneers of the "temporal turn" in historiography, Clark shows how Friedrich Wilhelm rejected the notion of continuity with the past, believing instead that a sovereign must liberate the state from the entanglements of tradition to choose freely among different possible futures. He demonstrates how Frederick the Great abandoned this paradigm for a neoclassical vision of history in which sovereign and state transcend time altogether, and how Bismarck believed that the statesman's duty was to preserve the timeless permanence of the state amid the torrent of historical change. Clark describes how Hitler did not seek to revolutionize history like Stalin and Mussolini, but instead sought to evade history altogether, emphasizing timeless racial archetypes and a prophetically foretold future. Elegantly written and boldly innovative, Time and Power takes readers from the Thirty Years' War to the fall of the Third Reich, revealing the connection between political power and the distinct temporalities of the leaders who wield it. "[An] impressive book . . . . [Clark] deserves praise for presenting familiar fields of German history from unusual and always rewarding angles."---Tony Barber, Financial Times "A stimulating and entertaining book."---Tim Blanning, Literary Review "[Time and Power] looks at history with a particular emphasis on the concept of time and should therefore offer a new and thought-provoking way to examine the past."---Hester Vaizey, Times Higher Education "Clark's book, with its provocative and useful theoretical command of the concepts of time and history and its mastery of the details of German history over four centuries, is an erudite, challenging, and thought-provoking work."---Michael Curtis, American Thinker "[A] stirring read that gathers momentum with every chapter."---Oliver Moody, The Times "An original and rewarding approach to modern German history."---Tony Barber, Financial Times, Summer Books of 2019 "To read this book is to be constantly stimulated to think new thoughts and to be exhilarated by the grandeur and subtlety of Clark's argument."---Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman "[Clark's] breadth of knowledge is impressive and his conclusions are carefully considered."---Hester Vaizey, Times Higher Education "There is much to be learned from these erudite studies of 'the warping of temporality by power.'"---Daniel Johnson, Standpoint "Whatever it lacks in grace, it amply makes up for in intellectual vigour." "Time and Power . . . [shows] that, in history, periods orienting towards the future have always been succeeded by periods focusing on the past."---Jilt Jorritsma, Nexus Review "Clark's book is brilliantly constructed, dazzling in its scholarship, and immensely stimulating. It shows how Prussian and German rulers located their exercise of power in conceptions of their relationship to past and future, casts new light on the ways in which belief

"Winner of the 2015 Gustav Ranis International Book Prize, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University" "Honorable Mention for the 2016 Marysa Navarro Best Book Prize, New England Council on Latin American Studies (NECLAS)" "Honorable Mention for the 2015 ASLI Choice Award in History, Atmospheric Science Librarians International" "Shortlisted for the 2015 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, McGill University" Stuart B. Schwartz is the George Burton Adams Professor of History and chair of the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale University. His many books include All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World. A panoramic social history of hurricanes in the Caribbean The diverse cultures of the Caribbean have been shaped as much by hurricanes as they have by diplomacy, commerce, or the legacy of colonial rule. In this panoramic work of social history, Stuart Schwartz examines how Caribbean societies have responded to the dangers of hurricanes, and how these destructive storms have influenced the region's history, from the rise of plantations, to slavery and its abolition, to migrations, racial conflict, and war. Taking readers from the voyages of Columbus to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Schwartz looks at the ethical, political, and economic challenges that hurricanes posed to the Caribbean's indigenous populations and the different European peoples who ventured to the New World to exploit its riches. He describes how the United States provided the model for responding to environmental threats when it emerged as a major power and began to exert its influence over the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, and how the region's governments came to assume greater responsibilities for prevention and relief, efforts that by the end of the twentieth century were being questioned by free-market neoliberals. Schwartz sheds light on catastrophes like Katrina by framing them within a long and contentious history of human interaction with the natural world. Spanning more than five centuries and drawing on extensive archival research in Europe and the Americas, Sea of Storms emphasizes the continuing role of race, social inequality, and economic ideology in the shaping of our responses to natural disaster. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions. "[A] deeply scholarly work. It is also engaging to read."---J. R. McNeill, Wall Street Journal "[F]inely researched . . . [a] fascinating story."---Adrian Barnett, New Scientist "[A] remarkable book."---James Attlee, Independent "[A] fascinating, extremely well-researched book."---Philip Hoare, Times Higher Education "The author weaves a tapestry that traces the emergence of a collective awareness of this hazard during colonization of the Americas, and considers the consequences of storm damage and catastrophes for politics, economics, geography, and life in general in the modernization of both island and continental nations of the realm." "Schwartz's book offers a refreshing perspective and is an important contribution to the study of the region's hazards and societies."---Johannes Bohle, H-Soz-u-Kult "Schwartz's versatility as a historian is on full display in this erudite, accessible, and ultimately essential book."---Kris Lane, Reviews in American History "A master synthesizer. . . . Schwartz . . . does a herculean job of studying the impact that hurricaneshave had on the Greater Caribbean since the days of Columbus to Katrina."---Douglas Brinkley, Environmental History "Sea of Storms provides the most comprehensive synthesis of the history of hurricanes to date, not just for the Caribbean but for the extended realm of the greater Caribbean."---Liz Skilton, Journal of American History "Sea of Storms is a book of Braudelian ambition by a master of the trade. The story is as engrossing as it is momentous."---Jordan E. Lauhon, Journal of Interdisciplinary

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013" Ayesha Jalal is the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University. Her books include Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, and The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Demand for Pakistan. A history of partition seen through the life and fiction of one of the subcontinent's most important modern writers Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Today Manto is an acknowledged master of twentieth-century Urdu literature, and his fiction serves as a lens through which the tragedy of partition is brought sharply into focus. In The Pity of Partition, Manto's life and work serve as a prism to capture the human dimension of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British raj. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll. Probing the creative tension between literature and history, she charts a new way of reconnecting the histories of individuals, families, and communities in the throes of cataclysmic change. Jalal brings to life the people, locales, and events that inspired Manto's fiction, which is characterized by an eye for detail, a measure of wit and irreverence, and elements of suspense and surprise. In turn, she mines these writings for fresh insights into everyday cosmopolitanism in Bombay and Lahore, the experience and causes of partition, the postcolonial transition, and the advent of the Cold War in South Asia. The first in-depth look in English at this influential literary figure, The Pity of Partition demonstrates the revelatory power of art in times of great historical rupture. "Tufts University historian Jalal (Partisans of Allah), a great-niece of Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955), gives readers an intimate, passionate, and insightful portrait of this brilliant but tragic man as he navigated and interpreted the repression, chaos, and violence of the final years of British colonialism and the upheaval of India's 1947 partition. The book follows Manto's life from his rebellious youth and early adulthood translating Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde in Amritsar, Punjab, to his years as a struggling journalist and film writer in Bombay, where his provocative stories elicited numerous obscenity charges while building his reputation as 'the father of the Urdu short story' and a "'unique literary miracle" destined for immortality,' and his prolific but troubled later years in postpartition Lahore, premature death at 42, and his boisterous funeral, where 'several of Manto's fictional characters were spotted in the crowd.'" "[A] fine introduction to Manto and his work, and his depiction of partition."---M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review "Eminent historian Jalal has written a rich, engaging, at times moving account of the life of Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-55), interweaving biography with the tumultuous events of Indian nationalism, the Partition, and early Pakistan. . . . A much-needed study of a pioneering public figure." "[S]ome of the finest pictures of Manto, his wife and of his friends embellish this book. Yet, the highlight of Jalal's work is that she has not let her proximity to Manto and his family affect in any way the objectivity that such a study would demand. Her unbiased approach to presenting Manto with his failings and foibles helps a more considered understanding of the writer." "Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-55) was a leading Urdu writer who attracted controversy in prepartition India and early postpartition Pakistan for his short stories and film script

Lyndal Roper is the Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. Her books include Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (Random House) and Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. She lives in Oxford, England. From the author of the acclaimed biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, new perspectives on how Luther and others crafted his larger-than-life image Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom. Renowned Luther biographer Lyndal Roper examines how the painter Lucas Cranach produced images that made the reformer an instantly recognizable character whose biography became part of Lutheran devotional culture. She reveals what Luther's dreams have to say about his relationships and discusses how his masculinity was on the line in his devastatingly crude and often funny polemical attacks. Roper shows how Luther's hostility to the papacy was unshaken to the day he died, how his deep-rooted anti-Semitism infused his theology, and how his memorialization has given rise to a remarkable flood of kitsch, from "Here I Stand" socks to Playmobil Luther. Lavishly illustrated, Living I Was Your Plague is a splendid work of cultural history that sheds new light on the complex and enduring legacy of Luther and his image. "Roper's book proves that a rigorously scholarly work can also be a pleasure to read."---Dan Hitchens, The Times "Roper questions Luther's character and legacy with the same anti-authoritarianismthat animated her subject, combining acuity with wit and levity, just as Luther did- though with fewer obscenities."---Suzannah Lipscomb, A Financial Times Best Book Of The Week "Provocative and thought-provoking, Living I Was Your Plague is an important contribution to our understanding of the life and afterlife of one of history's most complex figures, and a lively testament to the striking originality of Roper's scholarship."---Alexandra Walsham, Times Literary Supplement "Through its thematic approach this collection says much that could not be said in the inevitably heroic format of the biography. It provides insights that will shape the reader's experience of every future encounter with Luther. It integrates visual and material culture brilliantly throughout, arguing that from Cranach's early portraits to Playmobil's bestselling Luther figurine, images must be central to our interpretation of the Reformation. And it offers a critical reflection – wonderfully personal in places – on the experience of writing biography and living as a historian through a period of intense public interest. At a moment at which tensions over race and heritage have coalesced around public representations of historical men this collection provides a moral compass for those seeking to write the histories of heroes with dark sides."---Bridget Heal, History Today "After an outpouring of books about Luther at the time of the quicentenary, one could have been forgiven for thinking. . . that there wasn't much of interest left to be said. In her ambition to tackle together the life and the legend, and her avowed determination to appraise Luther in a thorougly Lutheran spirit of anti-authoritarianism, Lyndal Roper has triumphantly demonstrated the contrary."---Peter Marshall, The Tablet "[Living I Was Your Plague] may unsettle in ways that open diligent readers to new vision. The book accomplishes something that few of the books about Luther occasioned by the 2017 anniversary accomplished: it sees Luther with fresh eyes and shows us why we need to wrestle with his legacy."---Vincent Evener, Christian Century "Roper question

panoramic history of rules in the Western world Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don't, yet no culture could do without them. In “Rules”, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived. Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change, how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they don't, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines. “Rules” offers a wide-angle view on the history of the constraints that guide us-whether we know it or not.

Mark Mazower is the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History and World Order Studies at Columbia University. A groundbreaking interpretation of the intellectual origins of the United Nations No Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering instead a strikingly original interpretation of the UN's ideological roots, early history, and changing role in world affairs. Mazower brings the founding of the UN brilliantly to life. He shows how the UN's creators envisioned a world organization that would protect the interests of empire, yet how this imperial vision was decisively reshaped by the postwar reaffirmation of national sovereignty and the unanticipated rise of India and other former colonial powers. This is a story told through the clash of personalities, such as South African statesman Jan Smuts, who saw in the UN a means to protect the old imperial and racial order; Raphael Lemkin and Joseph Schechtman, Jewish intellectuals at odds over how the UN should combat genocide and other atrocities; and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, who helped transform the UN from an instrument of empire into a forum for ending it. A much-needed historical reappraisal of the early development of this vital world institution, No Enchanted Palace reveals how the UN outgrew its origins and has exhibited an extraordinary flexibility that has enabled it to endure to the present day. "[Mazower] has identified a gigantic contradiction in the United Nations' very DNA that may explain how the ambitious, well-intentioned body evolved into Mess-on-East River."---Marc Tracy, New York Times Book Review "One of the most distinguished historians of his generation." "In tracing the intellectual and ideological threads that went into the creation of both organizations, Mazower's main theme is the importance of British imperial tradition and policy."---Brian Urquhart, New York Review of Books "The finest historian of twentieth-century Europe."---Jonathan Keates, Times Literary Supplement "Mark Mazower sets out to challenge two notions: first, that the UN's creation in 1945 was uncontaminated by association with the League; and second, that it was above all an American affairs. . . . This book offers interesting glimpses of the UN's origins."---Adam Roberts, Times Literary Supplement "Provocative. . . . Mazower argues that the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, did not emerge from a pristine liberal vision of universal rights."---G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs "Mazower offers a scholarly review of the origins of the UN and a timely reminder that those origins need not shape its future. The UN should not be judged for what it is not."---Harvery Morris, Financial Times "Mark Mazower warns in his elegantly written intellectual history of the organization, the U.N. is not--and has never been--quite what it seems. In their rush to portray liberal internationalism as the height of human achievement, too many historians have forgotten what Mazower regards as the real ideological impulse behind the U.N.'s creation: preservation of the British Empire and white rule over Europe's colonial possessions."---Sasha Polakow-Suransky, American Prospect "A slim yet provocative volume that reveals the UN's origins in colonial imperialism."---Anna Mundow, Boston Globe "Mark Mazower's stimulating and insightful book casts new light on the organization's ideological prehistory, and in the process offers a corrective to previous, somewhat uncritical accounts of the UN's formation. . . . This book is an illuminating contribution to the debate about the United Nations."---Kirsten Sellars, International Affairs "Historian Mark

Chris Wickham is professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Oxford. A bold new history of the rise of the medieval Italian commune Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government-the commune-arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. Sleepwalking into a New World takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about, and fundamentally alters our understanding of one of the most important political and cultural innovations of the medieval world. Chris Wickham provides richly textured portraits of three cities-Milan, Pisa, and Rome-and sets them against a vibrant backcloth of other towns. He argues that, in all but a few cases, the elites of these cities and towns developed one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe, unaware that they were creating something altogether new. Wickham makes clear that the Italian city commune was by no means a democracy in the modern sense, but that it was so novel that outsiders did not know what to make of it. He describes how, as the old order unraveled, the communes emerged, governed by consular elites "chosen by the people," and subject to neither emperor nor king. They regularly fought each other, yet they grew organized and confident enough to ally together to defeat Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor, at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. Sleepwalking into a New World reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic culture of the Renaissance. "Wickham's expert analysis and meticulous academic approach build on previous. Limited examinations and substantial documentation to turn established research on its head, as he presents a fresh look into how communes in the mid-12th century successfully prepared Italian power structures for the cultural significance they would later have." "Wickham's analysis is meticulous and incisive, and he situates his conclusions clearly in light of the prior historiography." "Wickham's passion for medieval Italian urban history comes across on every page."---Corinne Wieben, H-Net Reviews "This book provides a useful foray into the internal debates occurring in those movements and thus lends layers of complexity to the overall argument."---Brooke Sherrard, Nova Religio "Wickham has a deep knowledge of the previous literature in the topic and an awareness of how this is linked to debates with broad ideological implications, such as the origins of Renaissance and of Republican forms of government and values."---Michele Campopiano, Catholic Historical Review "This elegant, concise, and highly readable book tackles afresh one of the great problems of world history. Generously acknowledging the research of previous historians and scrupulously avoiding foregone conclusions, Wickham compares Milan, Pisa, and Rome to revelatory effect. This is a work of huge analytical and explanatory power that can be read for sheer intellectual joy."-Jinty Nelson, King's College London "If ever a book needed writing, it is this one. Here we have a familiar narrative reinterpreted, from virtuosic research, by a master historian. With consummate vigor and clarity, Wickham shows how the rise of communal regimes in medieval Italy was hardly the doing of revolutionaries, as some once thought, but was rather a pragmatic adaptation to social and economic change by men assuming consular responsibilities within the lordships of bishops."-Thomas N. Bisson, Harvard University "How and why did the commune, that remarkable form of medieval Italian urban governance, evolve, under what stimuli and with what longer term results? These are some of the key questions to which we are given persuasive and well-argued answers in this eminently readable, deeply scholarly, and very welcome volume-a major achievement on which the author is to be heartily congratulated."