Based on an analysis of the most important polemics of the Investiture Contest, this book outlines the characteristics of the public sphere during the Contest a

In Bounded Wilderness, Kathryn Jasper focuses on the innovations undertaken at the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in central Italy during the eleventh century by i

In Scholars in Action, an international group of 40 authors open up new perspectives on the eighteenth-century culture of knowledge, with a particular focus on

Cities, Texts and Social Networks examines the experiences of urban life from late antiquity through the close of the fifteenth century, in regions ranging from

In the tradition of Why Nations Fail, this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world?