If Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch longer, neither Caesar nor Mark Anthony would have fallen in love with her. It: The History of Human Beauty treats outstanding physical attractiveness as a quality or possession, comparable to power, intelligence, strength, wealth, education or family, that had a marked effect on history. Beauty in men and women opened opportunities to its possessors not available to the ordinary looking or ugly. While in the past women have had to use the lure of sex to achieve power or wealth, epitomized by royal mistresses or the Grandes Horizontales of the nineteenth century, modern film stars (male and female) can acquire great wealth simply by the use of their images, while attractiveness on television is an essential modern qualification for power, as shown by Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair.

This new title is a totally rewritten version of The Nature of History, first published in 1970, with revised editions in 1981, and again in 1989. Addressing the key questions of what history is, and why and how one studies it, this is a positive affirmation of the vital importance to society of the study of the past, and of the many crucial learning outcomes which accrue from historical study. There is a great deal of new material, engaging with and rebutting postmodernist criticisms of the history of the historians, and explicating more fully the author's pioneering work on how exactly historians analyze and interpret primary sources, and how they write their articles and books. This is a book for all readers interested in history, and for students and writers of history at all levels.

If Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch longer, neither Caesar nor Mark Antony would have fallen in love with her. It: A History of Human Beauty treats outstanding physical attractiveness as a quality or possession, comparable to power, intelligence, strength, wealth, education or family, that had a marked effect on history. Beauty in men and women opened opportunities to its possessors not available to the ordinary looking or ugly. While in the past women have had to use the lure of sex to achieve power or wealth, epitomised by royal mistresses or the Grandes Horizontales of the nineteenth century, modern film stars (male and female) can acquire great wealth simply by the use of their images, while attractiveness on television is an essential modern qualification for power, as shown by Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair.

This collection of essays, by an international group of experts, supported by statistics concerns the social consequences of the two world wars, giving a clear analysis of the particular experiences of war.;It covers the main European countries and a range of major issues including the levels of economic activity, women's employment and the extent of executions of collaborators.;The editor is the author of "The Nature of History".

Arthur Marwick’s penetrating survey of Britain’s society and lifestyles since the Second World War has been extensively updated for the twenty-first century.

High and popular culture; race, gender and class relations; science and technology; ‘Britishness’ and relations with Europe – the diversity of social developments in these areas from 1945 to 2002 is explored here within a clear chronological framework. An examination of opinion polls and two major sex surveys offer fascinating insights into current social attitudes. And additional chapters bring this edition right up to date, offering a lively critique of New Labour and discussing many recent issues that affect the nation today, such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, race riots, the BSE and foot-and-mouth crises, and the effect on the economy of September 11.

Key media reference points of the 1960s, including "The Avengers, This Sporting Life, Panorama, The Apartment" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, " are the focus of this book. Each chapter addresses common issues of contexts of production and reception, of genre, style and aesthetics and the book as a whole draws together the impressions of the era given by these windows on the sixties.

Almost continuously in print for 40 years, this classic title describes life on the home front, analyzing the social changes that made Britain of the 1920s a vastly different place from the Britain that went to war in 1914. This reissued second edition features a new Preface by leading historian Joanna Bourke.

If the World Wars defined the first half of the twentieth century, the sixties defined the second half, acting as the pivot on which modern times have turned. From popular music to individual liberties, the tastes and convictions of the Western world are indelibly stamped with the impact of this tumultuous decade. Framing the sixties as a period stretching from 1958 to 1974, Arthur Marwick argues that this long decade ushered in nothing less than a cultural revolution - one that raged most clearly in the United States, Britain, France, and Italy. Marwick recaptures the events and movements that shaped life as we know it: the rise of a youth subculture across the West; the sit-ins and marches of the civil rights movement; Britain's surprising rise to leadership in fashion and music; the emerging storm over Vietnam; the Paris student uprising of 1968; the growing force of feminism, and much more. For some, it was a golden age of liberation and political progress; for others, an era in which depravity was celebrated, and the secure moral and social framework subverted. The sixties was no short-term era of ecstasy and excess. On the contrary, the decade set the cultural and social agenda for the rest of the century, and left deep divisions still felt today.