Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830 explores what literate British people understood by the word 'Europe' in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Was Europe unified by shared religious heritage? Where were the edges of Europe? Was Europe primarily a commercial network or were there common political practices too? Was Britain itself a European country? While intellectual history is concerned predominantly with prominent thinkers, Paul Stock traces the history of ideas in non-elite contexts, offering a detailed analysis of nearly 350 geographical reference works, textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias, which were widely read by literate Britons of all classes, and can reveal the formative ideas about Europe circulating in Britain: ideas about religion; the natural environment; race and other theories of human difference; the state; borders; the identification of the 'centre' and 'edges' of Europe; commerce and empire; and ideas about the past, progress, and historical change. By showing how these and other questions were discussed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830 provides a thorough and much-needed historical analysis of Britain's enduringly complex intellectual relationship with Europe.

Originally published in 1848 as the first major work in the nascent discipline as well as the first publication of the newly established Smithsonian Institution, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley remains today not only a key document in the history of American archaeology but also the primary source of information on hundreds of mounds and earthworks in the eastern United States, most of which have now vanished. Despite adhering to the popular assumption that the moundbuilders could not have been the ancestors of the supposedly savage Native American groups still living in the region, the authors set high standards for their time. Their work provides insight into some of the conceptual, methodological, and substantive issues that archaeologists still confront. Long out of print, this 150th anniversary edition includes David J. Meltzer's lively introduction, which describes the controversies surrounding the book’s original publication, from a bitter, decades-long feud between Squier and Davis to widespread debates about the links between race, religion, and human origins. Complete with a new index and bibliography, and illustrated with the original maps, plates, and engravings, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley provides a new generation with a first-hand view of this pioneer era in American archaeology.

When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century.