Continuum History

New History catalogue now online!

Continuum History 2011 Catalogue

Lots of new books coming up - there's still plenty to interest the general reader, but we're also expanding our range of student guides and research titles over the next year or so too. 

We're particularly developing our Ancient/Classical History list, including new student series Continuum Sources in Ancient History, and we've also got lots more Medieval History books, from the fun A Hermit's Cookbook to research work The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe 1000-1500, as well as a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh, a much-anticipated paperback edition of Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and Their Place in History and, of course, lots of new Modern and Military History books - including Jeremy Black's The Great War and the Making of the Modern World and Richard Overy's edited collection Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945.

This is a very brief summary - I'll let you see the rest for yourself!

Carly

Guardian feature on Roland Huntford's polar expedition work

Read Captain Scott: A second-rate hero? - John Crace, The Guardian

Celebrating the publication this week (UK) of Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen, John Crace has written a great piece on the 'Scott myth' and Roland Huntford's work in this new book and previous publications to dispel Scott's 'hero' reputation.

As Crace says, Huntford 'breaks new ground by letting both men live and die side by side in their own words' - Race for the South Pole runs Scott and Amundsens' (plus his colleague Olav Bjaaland's) unedited diaries together chronologically.  So you can see for yourself the direct comparison between the two expeditions - 'on days when Scott is tent-bound in a blizzard, Amundsen is again achieving his expected daily distance, because he has brought proper sledge compasses'.

The Times also reviewed the book on Saturday, similarly appreciative: 'Crucially, [Huntford] reads Norwegian, and the translations are his own. Decades of experience allow him to dilate on the idiosyncrasies of fur in the polar environment; on the workings of the anemometers and on the 'meridian sight method of finding latitude' ... This work is brilliant, and well executed.'

Huntford has provided commentary throughout the book, which is also packed full of illustrations.  You can preview the full contents, a big proportion of the Introduction and the Index online.

Carly

London's Shadows in the press

London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City by Drew D. Gray, reviewed by Stephen Halliday for History Today

It's lovely to see a debut book like London's Shadows receive a positive review in a publication such as History Today (this one appears in the October edition).

There's also been a favourable review in geneaology magazine Your Family Tree, which although I can't link to as it's only available in print, I can paste a snippet from: ‘A scholarly work, drawing on a wide range of sources, but it’s also very readable. It provides a welcome and sensible counterbalance to the endless titles about ‘ripperology’ with its focus on the grim realities of life in London’s poorer quarters at the time.’

And if that's got you interested, you can always preview the book itself!

Carly

Medieval Intrigue - preview the new book from Ian Mortimer

Preview Medieval Intrigue: Decoding Royal Conspiracies

I'm excited to announce Medieval Intrigue on this blog as I truly feel that this is a fantastic piece of work to have on the History list because of some of the questions it raises about history in general.  Ian Mortimer is a historian known for doing things a little bit differently (just one example being the book he is best known for: The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England) and this time he's tempting controversy by asking whether any of 'history' can actually ever be 'more than a matter of opinion?'  Which of course would mean our long-established ideas about history may in fact be incorrect...

In this latest book, Ian uses some of the big debates in medieval history (such as, was Edward II really murdered at Berkely castle?) and asks broader questions about the nature of historical evidence and analysis.  He proposes that we should be using an information-based method when judging history that would allow both historical doubts and facts to be questioned and to fix points that limit the infinite amount of possible new explanations about the past.

What we are left with is:

If Ian is right, we could finally have a means to obtain true, undisputable history.

If Ian is wrong, the implication is that we can't be certain about any specific aspect of the past.

I hope that's left you feeling curious and wanting to check out the preview! The book itself publishes in about 2 weeks' time in the UK.

Carly