Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.

Contains nearly 2,000 annotated citations (primarily English language works) divided into forth-eight sections ; citations refer chiefly to works published between 1961 and 1992.

How should historians speak truth to power – and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history – especially long-term history – so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. This title is also available as Open Access.

This study explores the explosive history of volcanoes and volcanic thought in eighteenth-century Europe, arguing that the topic of the volcano informed almost all areas of human enquiry and endeavour at the time. Encountered on the Grand Tour, sought out by scientific explorers or endured by local populations in southern Italy and Iceland, erupting volcanoes were a physical reality for many Europeans in the eighteenth-century. For many others, they represented the very image of overwhelming natural power, whether this was ultimately attributed to spiritual or material causes. As such, the volcano proved an effective and versatile 'tool for thinking' in a century which ushered in modernity on several fronts: continental tourism, new earth sciences, the sublime and picturesque in art, industrial and political revolution, the conception of the modern nation-state, and early intimations of environmental and climate change. But the volcano also gives us, in the twenty-first century, a privileged site (as both topography and topos) at which we can reconnect disparate and divided fields of research across the sciences and the humanities. Drawing on a rich variety of multi-lingual primary sources and the latest critical thinking, this study combines material and symbolic readings of eighteenth-century volcanism, constantly shifting frameworks, so as to consider this topical object through different disciplinary perspectives. The volcano is clearly transnational; this research also demonstrates how it is fundamentally transdisciplinary.