This book focuses on the ways in which military technology, political and social trends, and shifting frontiers shaped the emergence of new forms of public authority and civic life as embodied in the "wall," an image at once intensely physical and deeply symbolic. It traces the evolution of towns across much of what is today France from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century when the walls began to come down, opening up new, ultimately revolutionary possibilities for urban life. This long-term perspective on town fortifications-how they were built, the contests to control them, and how they shaped the lives of people both inside and outside them-in the end tell us much about the making of France.

This study argues that Shakespeare can now be understood as part of public culture. Thanks to the emergence of mass education in the twentieth century, Albanese argues that Shakespeare has become a shared property, despite the depiction of his texts as 'elite' cultural objects in the film industry.