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.

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history.

This title chronicles the successful revolt when brutally treated slaves in Saint Domingo, (what is now Haiti), rose up in rebellion against their French masters during the French Revolution in 1791. Included is a critical portrait of the slave's leader Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Describes London from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs. This title includes chapters on the history of silence and the history of light, the history of childhood and the history of suicide, the history of Cockney speech and the history of drink.

At the offset there were not one, but two revolutions: egalitarian and authoritarian. The tension between the two characterized the period and shaped the Republic that in the end emerged from the ruins of the Ancient Regime. The author provides an account of the years leading up to the Revolution and of the Revolution itself.