History Today

An introduction by Geoffrey Parker on the European Witch-craze of the 16th and 17th centuries.

John Terraine studies the effects of Napoleonic doctrine upon the leadership of mass armies in the Industrial Age.

Abu Raihan al-Biruni, an Islamic scholar from Central Asia, may have discovered the New World centuries before Columbus – without leaving his study.

Evelyn Howe takes the reader on a visit to private play-houses and their players during the later eighteenth century.

Daniel Snowman asks whether historical biography can be considered a serious contribution to history and assesses the latest trends in the field.

The late 17th century saw the arrival of a new way of buying and selling books. Amy Bowles explores the impact of the book auction on those with a commercial and scholarly interest in the printed word.

The siege of Rouen in 1418 was a brutal episode of medieval warfare, made worse by the fact that the city’s elderly and infirm were abandoned to a no man’s land. Daniel E. Thiery explains how the medieval mind justified such actions.

‘War is an uncivil game and can’t be civilised’, said one Union sergeant of General Sherman’s rampage through Georgia in 1864. Matt Carr discusses this turning point in the American Civil War.