New Publications
Cholera The Biography
Christopher Hamlin
Cholera is a frightening disease. Victims are wracked by stomach cramps and suffer intense diarrhoea. Death can come within hours.
Though now seeming a distant memory in Europe, which suffered several 
epidemics in the 19th century before John Snow identified the link with water, cholera is still a serious threat in many parts of the world--Zimbabwe is a recent example. Snow's discovery was one of the great breakthroughs of epidemiology and a wonderful story from the history of science. Later came the discovery of the culprit organism--Cholera vibrio--understanding of its life cycle, and the development of a vaccine. But the problem of cholera has not disappeared. This book tells the story of cholera, and looks at both the medical success in the West, and the different attitudes to the disease in countries in which it is prevalent as opposed to those in which it put in a temporary appearance. Unlike other books on cholera, which focus on the experience of particular countries, Christopher Hamlin's account draws together the experiences from various countries, both those that were colonies and those that were not.
Cholera: the biography is part of the Oxford series, Biographies of Diseases, edited by William and Helen Bynum. In each individual volume an expert historian or clinician tells the story of a particular disease or condition throughout history - not only in terms of growing medical understanding of its nature and cure, but also shifting social and cultural attitudes, and changes in the meaning of the name of the disease itself.
1492 The Year the World Began
Felipe Fernandez Armesto
In this extraordinary, sweeping history, Felipe Fernández-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to that single, fateful year. Everything changed in 1492: the way power and wealth were distributed around the globe, the way major religions and civilizations divided the world, and the increasing interconnectedness of separate economies that we now call globalization. Events that began in 1492 transformed the whole ecological system of the planet. Our individualism and the very sense we share of inhabiting one world, as 
partakers in a common humanity, took shape and became visible in 1492.
In search of the origins of modernity, 1492 takes readers on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travelers, drawing together the threads that came to bind the planet. The tour starts in Granada, where the last Islamic kingdom in Europe collapsed, then moves to Timbuktu, where a new Muslim empire triumphed. With Portuguese explorers, we visit the court of the first Christian king in the southern hemisphere. We join Jews expelled from Spain as they cross the Mediterranean to North Africa, Italy, and Istanbul. We see the flowering of the Renaissance in the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent and go to the corrupt Rome of Alexander Borgia. We see the frozen frontiers of the dynamic, bloody Russia of Ivan the Great and hear mystical poets sing on the shores of the Indian Ocean. We sail the Atlantic with Columbus. In the depths of an old volcanic crater in the Canary Islands, we witness the start of the first European overseas empire. We observe the Aztecs and Incas laying the foundations of a New World in the Americas.
Wars and witchcraft, plagues and persecutions, poetry and prophecy, science and magic, art and faith—all the glories and follies of the time are in this book. Everywhere, new departures marked the start of a new configuration for humankind, revealing how and why the modern world is different from the worlds of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
History seems a patternless labyrinth—but a good guide can trace our paths through it back to the moment when some of the most striking features of today's world began.
Macaulay The Tragedy of Power
Robert E. Sullivan
On the 150th anniversary of his death, the great British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) remains an enigmatic character, steeped in contradictions between his actions, his proclamations and his interior life. The latter is not Sullivan’s central concern. Thus, the concealed love Macaulay felt for his 
two youngest sisters is not far developed here. Sullivan concentrates instead on Macaulay’s uncanny understanding of England’s grand position in the world. The author observes that “long before Henry Kissinger, [Macaulay] understood that 'power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.’ ” What makes him a unusual figure for our time is his classicism—his chief models being Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus—as well as his position as a bestseller with a multivolume history of England. Macaulay’s literary interests included Milton, Dryden, Byron and Bacon, but Machiavelli was the overriding influence, says Sullivan, a historian and associate vice president of Notre Dame. Macaulay detested Dickens for his socialistic smarminess; he anticipated Ivan Pavlov more than Sigmund Freud; and he was an abolitionist who didn’t believe in abolishing slavery. Overall, Macaulay remains a confounding figure, whose personality lies largely unraveled
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious
Thomas F.X. Noble
Translations of ninth-century lives of the emperors Charlemagne (by Einhard and 
Notker) and his son Louis the Pious (by Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer). Presented chronologically and contextually, with commentary"--Provided by publisher.
Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought
Margaret Meserve
Renaissance humanists believed that the origins of peoples could reveal crucial facts about their modern political character. Margaret Meserve explores what happened when European historians turned to study the political history of a faith other than their own.
Meserve investigates the methods and illuminates the motives of scholars 
negotiating shifting boundaries--between scholarly research and political propaganda, between a commitment to critical historical inquiry and the pressure of centuries of classical and Christian prejudice, between the academic ideals of humanism and the everyday demands of political patronage. Drawing on political oratory, diplomatic correspondence, crusade propaganda, and historical treatises, Meserve shows how research into the origins of Islamic empires sprang from--and contributed to--contemporary debates over the threat of Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean. Humanist histories of the Turks were sharply polemical, portraying the Ottomans as a rogue power. But writings on other Muslim polities include some of the first positive appraisals of Muslim statecraft in the European tradition.
This groundbreaking book offers new insights into Renaissance humanist scholarship and the long-standing European debates over the relationship between Christianity and Islam.
Reviews
This erudite and elegant book explores the efforts of Renaissance humanists to understand the Ottoman Turks and the world they came from. Using rich evidence, much of it not studied before, Meserve teaches us a great deal about the transmission, use, and misuse of historical and political information in modern Europe's first public sphere.
--Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
A superb and original study, impressively researched and cogently argued, on a significant aspect of humanist scholarship. It will be of interest to scholars in Renaissance, late medieval, early modern, Ottoman, Turkish, and Islamic studies, as well as a broader audience of readers who follow the growing literature on European views of other societies.
--Cemal Kafadar, Harvard University
Meserve's achievement is brilliant and important on several levels. She has given us what will become a much cited study on early Western 'orientalism.' She has enormously enriched our understanding not only of Renaissance humanism, but also of the relationship between the humanists and their medieval predecessors, pointing to a reconsideration of what is traditionally viewed as medieval and what is viewed as Renaissance. For decades to come, this will serve as a standard work on the humanist understanding of the Turk.
--John Monfasani, State University of New York at Albany
The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue
Mark Noll & James Turner
Evangelicals and Roman Catholics have been responsible for the establishment of many colleges and universities in America. Until recently, however, they have
taken very different approaches to the subject of education and have viewed one anothers traditions with suspicion. In this volume, Mark Noll and James Turner offer critical but appreciative reassessments of the two traditions. Noll, writing from an evangelical perspective, and Turner, from a Roman Catholic perspective, consider the respective strengths and weaknesses of each approach and what they might learn from the other. The authors then provide brief responses to each others essays. Thoughtful readers from both traditions will find insightful and challenging ideas regarding the importance of Christian learning and the role of faith in the modern college or university.
On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru
Sabine MacCormack
Winner of the 2007 John E. Fagg Prize and James A. Rawley Prize
Historians have long recognized that the classical heritage of ancient Rome contributed to the development of a vibrant society in Spanish South America, but was the impact a one-way street? Although the Spanish destruction of the Incan empire changed the Andes forever, the civil society that did emerge was not the result of Andeans and Creoles passively absorbing the wisdom of ancient Rome. Rather, Sabine MacCormack proposes that civil society was born of the intellectual endeavors that commenced with the invasion itself, as the invaders sought to understand an array of cultures. Looking at the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people who wrote about the Andean region that became Peru, MacCormack reveals how the lens of Rome had a profound influence on Spanish understanding of the Incan empire.
Tracing the varied events that shaped Peru as a country, MacCormack shows how Roman and classical literature provided a framework for the construal of historical experience. She turns to issues vital to Latin American history, such as the role of language in conquest, the interpretation of civil war, and the founding of cities, to paint a dynamic picture of the genesis of renewed political life in the Andean region. Examining how missionaries, soldiers, native lords, and other writers employed classical concepts to forge new understandings of Peruvian society and history, the book offers a complete reassessment of the ways in which colonial Peru made the classical heritage uniquely its own.
Sabine MacCormack is Theodore Hesburgh Professor of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. Her books include Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton).
Review:
"Historian MacCormack offers a fresh examination of Spanish understanding of culture and history in the lands that became Peru. . . . This clearly written, thoughtful, and perceptive volume is based on outstanding research in printed primary and secondary materials in Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and English."--Choice
Endorsements:
"On the Wings of Time is a delight to read. MacCormack's meditations are those of a master scholar and storyteller; this is a very significant and novel contribution to our understanding of South American history."--Sabine Hyland, Saint Norbert College
"This book is pathbreaking in its approach to the historiography of the Spanish colonial world. MacCormack has exquisite control of the relevant sources, and weaves them together in a masterful and original way."--Bruce Mannheim, University of Michigan
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
Mark Noll
The Civil War was a major turning point in American religious thought, argues Mark A. Noll. Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. 
Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.
In addition to examining what white and black Americans wrote about slavery and race, Noll surveys commentary from foreign observers. Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada saw clearly that no matter how much the voluntary reliance on scriptural authority had contributed to the construction of national civilization, if there were no higher religious authority than personal interpretation regarding an issue as contentious as slavery, the resulting public deadlock would amount to a full-blown theological crisis. By highlighting this theological conflict, Noll adds to our understanding of not only the origins but also the intensity of the Civil War.
Review
In an informative account of the theological dramas that underpinned and were unleashed by the Civil War, Noll (America's God) argues that mid-19th-century America harbored "a significant theological crisis." Quite simply, ministers disagreed about how to read the Bible-and as much as it was a result of fierce disagreements about slavery or Union, Noll says, the Civil War was a crisis over biblical interpretation. The Bible's apparent acceptance of slavery led Christians into bitter debates, with Southern proslavery theologians detailing an elaborate defense of the "peculiar institution" and Northern antislavery clerics arguing that the slavery found in the Old Testament bore no resemblance to the chattel slavery of Southern plantations. Noll detours, for several chapters, to Europe, analyzing what Christians there had to say about America's sectional and scriptural debates. He suggests that religious upheaval did not evaporate at Appomattox. In the postbellum years, Americans grappled with two great problems of "practical theology": racism, and the convulsions of capitalism. This book's substantive analysis belies its brevity. As today's church debates over homosexuality reveal a new set of disagreements about how to read the Bible, this slim work of history is surprisingly timely. (Apr. 24) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
From Roosevelt to Truman: Postdam, Hiroshima and the Origins of the Cold War
Wilson D. (Bill) Miscamble, C.S.C.
On April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died and Harry Truman took his place in the White House. Historians have been arguing ever since about the implications of this transition for American foreign policy in general and relations with the Soviet 
Union in particular. Was there essential continuity in policy or did Truman's arrival in the Oval Office prompt a sharp reversal away from the approach of his illustrious predecessor? This study explores this controversial issue and in the process casts important light on the outbreak of the Cold War. From Roosevelt to Truman investigates Truman's foreign policy background and examines the legacy that FDR bequeathed to him. This work reveals that the real departure in American policy came only after the Truman administration had exhausted the legitimate possibilities of the Rooseveltian approach of collaboration with the Soviet Union.
Review
Compelling and controversial subject involving two major political and historical figures - Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Examining whether there was essential continuity in policy or did Truman's arrival in the Oval Office prompt a sharp reversal away from the approach of his illustrious predecessor. Casts important light on the outbreak of the Cold War.
Fundamentalism and American Culture
George Marsden
Many American's today are taking note of the surprisingly strong political force that is the religious right. Controversial decisions by the government are met with hundreds of lobbyists, millions of dollars of advertising spending, and a powerful grassroots response. How has the fundamentalist movement managed to resist the pressures of the scientific community and the draw of modern popular culture to hold on to their ultra-conservative Christian views? Understanding the movement's history is key to answering this question. Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most 
influential religious movements.
For Marsden, fundamentalists are not just religious conservatives; they are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and to fight. In Marsden's words (borrowed by Jerry Falwell), "a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something." In the late nineteenth century American Protestantism was gradually dividing between liberals who were accepting new scientific and higher critical views that contradicted the Bible and defenders of the more traditional evangelicalism. By the 1920s a full-fledged "fundamentalist" movement had developed in protest against theological changes in the churches and changing mores in the culture. Building on networks of evangelists, Bible conferences, Bible institutes, and missions agencies, fundamentalists coalesced into a major protest movement that proved to have remarkable staying power.
For this newedition, a major new chapter compares fundamentalism since the 1970s to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, looking particularly at the extraordinary growth in political emphasis and power of the more recent movement. Never has it been more important to understand the history of fundamentalism in our rapidly polarizing nation. Marsden's carefully researched and engrossing work remains the best way to do just that.
George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of HIstory at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life.
With Our Labor and Sweat: Indegenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru 1550-1700
Karen Graubert
Based upon substantial new research, this book investigates the heterogeneity of experiences of rural and urban indigenous women in early colonial Peru, from the 
massive changes in their working lives, to their utilization of colonial law to seek redress, to their creation of urban dress styles that reflected their new positions as consumers and as producers under Spanish rule.
Review
Based upon substantial new research, this book investigates the heterogeneity of experiences of rural and urban indigenous women in Peru during the first two centuries of Spanish colonization. Using wills, as well as other notarial and legal documents, it discusses changes in their working lives and how their identity as “Indians” as well as women was shaped in a multicultural society. From their utilization of colonial law to seek redress, to their creation of urban dress styles that reflected their new positions as consumers and as producers under Spanish rule, the early colonial period witnessed a dramatic upheaval in indigenous women's lives. By analyzing the migration from rural to urban areas, interaction with Spanish as well as African society, and the lives of both plebeians and elites, the author provides a thorough picture of this transformational period.
Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life
John Van Engen
"The Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devout, puzzled their contemporaries. Beginning in the 1380s in market towns along the Ijssel River of the east-central Netherlands and in the county of Holland, they formed households organized as communes and forged lives centered on private devotion. They defended their self-designed style of life as exemplary and sustained it in the face of opposition, their women labeled "beguines" and their men "lollards," both meant as 
derogatory terms. Yet the movement grew, drawing in women and schoolboys, priests and laymen, and spreading outward toward Minister, Flanders, and Cologne." The Devout were arguably more culturally significant than the Lollards and Beguines, yet they have commanded far less scholarly attention in English. John Van Engen's magisterial book keeps the Modern Devout at its center and thinks through their story anew. Few interpreters have read the Devout so insistently within their own time and space by looking to the social and religious conditions that marked towns and parishes in northern Europe during the fifteenth century and examining the widespread upheavals in cultural and religious life between the 1370s and the 1440s. In Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, Van Engen grasps the Devout in their humanity, communities, and beliefs, and places them firmly within the urban societies of the Low Countries and the cultures we call late medieval.