The history of tea, including the silk road and how the horse directly impacted life and the World.

Discusses monarchies as a political system, and details the history of monarchies throughout the world.

In a book with full-color photos and more than 100 recipes--including Thousand-Year-Old Eggs and Smoked Tea-Brined Capon--the authors offer an overview of tea, including ancient picking and drying techniques, popular growing regions around the world and the storied past of the tea trade.

From drawing rooms of Victorian Britain to Ontario kitchens, rituals of afternoon tea have always delighted.

Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner’s work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.