This text traces the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the 20th century. Using research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources such as workers' memoirs, social surveys and library registers, Jonathan Rose seeks to answer such questions as which books people read, how and why they educated themselves, and what they knew. In the ...(展开全部)

Which books did the British working classes read--and how did they read them? How did they respond to canonical authors, penny dreadfuls, classical music, school stories, Shakespeare, Marx, Hollywood movies, imperialist propaganda, the Bible, the BBC, the Bloomsbury Group? What was the quality of their classroom education? How did they educate themselves? What was their level o...(展开全部)

This is a landmark intellectual history of Britain’s working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers’ memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose uncovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface addresses the continuing relevance of the book amidst the upheavals of t...(展开全部)

Listen to Steve Fuller talk about his latest book in this series of podcasts recorded during Warwick University's Festival of Social Science. "The Sociology of Intellectual Life" outlines a social theory of knowledge for the 21st century. With characteristic subtlety and verve, Steve Fuller deals directly with a world in which it is no longer taken for granted that universities...(展开全部)

What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civil society. Cowan p...(展开全部)

What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civil society. Cowan p...(展开全部)

From the English Civil War to today's War on Terror: in this sweeping account of nearly 500 years of military history, former soldier Allan Mallinson looks at how the Armys dramatic past has made it one of the most effective fighting forces in the world today.He shows us the people and events that have shaped the army we know today: how Marlboroughs momentous victory at Blenhei...(展开全部)

When a society becomes more affluent, does it lose other values? Are the skills that education and literacy gave millions wasted on consuming pop culture? Do the media coerce us into a world of the superficial and the material - or can they be a force for good? When Richard Hoggart asked these questions in his 1957 book "The Uses of Literacy", Britain was undergoing huge social...(展开全部)

When a society becomes more affluent, does it lose other values? Are the skills that education and literacy gave millions wasted on consuming pop culture? Do the media coerce us into a world of the superficial and the material - or can they be a force for good? When Richard Hoggart asked these questions in his 1957 book "The Uses of Literacy", Britain was undergoing huge social...(展开全部)