A decade of research into the seventeenth and eighteenth century unearths ideas and stories about liberty, democracy and freedom that terrified the ruling classes of the time and formed the foundations of modern revolutions.

Simon Schama, the author of The Embarrassment of Riches and Citizens , sets out to tell the history of two certainties, of two deaths. In discussing the speculations surrounding them, he finds himself involved in a history he cannot classify - the unpredictable history of stories.

Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This analysis of beliefs held on different levels of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700.

The Dutch Golden Age was one of the most spectacularly creative episodes in world history. The age of Grotius, Spinoza, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, it was also remarkable for its immense impact in the spheres of commerce, finance, shipping, and technology. This book provides a comprehensive account of the history of the Dutch republic.

A history of the French Revolution, this book gives an account of the first few years of the great Revolution in France, and of the decades that led up to it.