How did women in 16th century western Europe cope with the consequences of being considered inherently sinful--as well as being legally and economically subordinate to their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons? What might become of a woman unable to raise a dowry? What were the difficulties faced by spinsters, single mothers, and widows? In this brilliant investigation into the lives of women from all social strata, Hufton leads us from poor-house to palazzo, from cradle to grave, illuminating what it meant to be female in western Europe during the years 1500 to 1800.

    Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

    Recounts the life of seventeenth century Scottish hero James Graham, the 1st Marquess of Montrose, who spent years struggling against the anti-royalist forces of Civil War Scotland, until his execution in Edinburgh in 1650.

    Scholars have long sought to explain the massive changes in European military techniques and technologies that took place between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the industrial age—changes that transformed the armies and navies of the West into the most powerful war-making entities the world had ever known.Historians have disagreed about and vigorously debated the importance of these changes for European politics, for the process of state formation, for the rise of the West, and for warfare itself. This book brings together, for the first time, the classic articles that began and have shaped this debate, adding important new essays by eminent historians of early modern Europe to further this important scholarly interchange. The contributors consider topics ranging from the battlefield to the gunmaker’s workshop, from England to India, and from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The Military Revolution Debate will be required reading for anyone interested in what is undoubtedly one of the hottest areas in military history today.

    In this book, the author discusses the history and development of Italian record keeping, providing reproductions of typical records and a complete translation and thorough explanation of each. Among the many other topics covered in this book are the significance of Italian surnames and the relevance of Italian noble families in the search for Italian ancestors.

    But while philosophers have sought to understand the ramifications of his theories, they have paid much less attention to how, exactly, he arrived at his ideas. What twists and turns of his intellect brought him to his epochal conclusions? How did his personal ambitions and the social conditions of his era shape his thought? These questions and more are masterfully answered in Stephen Gaukroger's Descartes, a fascinating look at this most influential of all Renaissance thinkers. In his quest to retrace Descartes's development as a scientist and philosopher, Gaukroger leaves no stone unturned. From the great man's first book on music theory (Compendium Musicae) to his masterworks Discours, Essais, Meditationes, and Principia, from his study of mathematics while attending a Jesuit college at age ten, through his dying days in the service of Christina, Queen of Sweden, Descartes brims with penetrating and often surprising insights into the philosopher's life and work. We discover, for example, that he wasn't as concerned with developing an all-encompassing theory of knowledge as he was with establishing a natural philosophy that supported the teachings of Copernicus, a man whose work he deeply admired. We also learn that Descartes was willing to alter his publicly stated views to accommodate church doctrine--especially after witnessing Galileo's condemnation in 1633. We observe how his personal triumphs and failures--from his rumored nervous breakdown in 1614, to his joy at the popular reception of Discours and Essais, to his protracted and very public dispute with the implacable professor Voetius--affected his intellectual development. Along the way, Gaukroger details how Descartes's theories of metaphysics, mechanics, cognition, and cosmology have been both championed and distorted by philosophers of all stripes for over three hundred years. Packed with helpful diagrams and in-depth interpretations of Descartes's most celebrated works, the book also includes a useful chronology that highlights his important accomplishments and personal milestones. Descartes is an exhaustively detailed, magisterial look at the dazzling intellectual achievements of the father of modern philosophy. Splendidly written by a renowned authority on the subject, it will serve as the definitive guide to Descartes's thoughts, works, and life for years to come.

    -- Stanley Krippner

    Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution.Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history.

    By considering both archival and narrative sources, she demonstrates why they were prepared, encouraging her readers to adopt a critical approach to their findings. While the book is essentially a guide to a complex discipline for initiates into the field, the experienced Ottomanist will find much that is original and provocative in its sophisticated interpretation.

    Liberated from the need to build for defence by the establishment of domestic peace and financed by a buoyant economy, the Tudor and Jacobean aristocracy indulged in a frenzy of competitive building which radically changed the face of the countryside. Stimulated by the Elizabethan Court, architecture became a matter of passionate interest and social rivalry, characterized by symbolism, allegory and fantasy.