A Very Brief History Series (9 vols.)

by Averil Cameron; Anthony Kenny; Lynn McDonald; Janina Ramirez; Helen K. Bond

and

4 more

Publisher:

SPCK

, 2016–2017

Overview

This collection will enhance your understanding of nine of the most significant people and movements in world history. In these volumes, history is told not merely as a collection of important facts and dates, but as an engaging narrative that has long-lasting consequences. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized expert who weaves together both the history and the legacy of the influential person or movement being studied. What is it about the lives and ideas expressed by these figures and developments that have endured for centuries and even millennia?

Key Features

• Offers the essential information and significance of nine key people and historical movements in under 150 pages per volume
• Provides chronologies at a glance for each person or movement, along with a glossary of key terms, and a list of helpful sources for further study
• Specifies the historical and intellectual context in which each person or movement took shape

Product Details

• Title: A Very Brief History Series
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Volumes: 9
• Pages: 1,168
• Resource Type: Topical
• Topic: History

Byzantine Christianity: A Very Brief History

• Author: Averil Cameron
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

From the foundation of Constantinople in 330 to its fall in 1453, this brief history explores the key components of Byzantine Christianity, including the development of monasticism, icons and iconoclasm, the role of the emperor in relation to church councils and beliefs, the difficult relationship with the papacy and the impact of the Crusades.

The book also considers Byzantine Christianity as a living force today: the variety and vitality of Orthodox churches, the role of the Church in Russia and the enduring relevance of a spirituality derived from the church fathers.

Averil Cameron’s work has transformed our understanding of Byzantium, and here she offers an authoritative survey of its history and legacy . . . This is a lucid, informative and impressively wide-ranging brief history.

—Gillian Clark FBA, emeritus professor of classics and ancient history, University of Bristol

Dame Averil Cameron, FBA, was formerly Warden of Keble College, Oxford. She is President of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.

The Enlightenment: A Very Brief History

• Author: Anthony Kenny
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 144

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Smith, Gibbon, Bentham . . . These are among the great thinkers who contributed to the dramatic developments in religion, science and philosophy that we now call the Enlightenment. They dominated the second half of the eighteenth century and their writings continue to shape the intellectual and political worlds we now inhabit.

Written by a world authority, this brief history of the Enlightenment concludes with a perceptive assessment of the cultural, religious, ethical and political dimensions of its legacy.

The author not only has a remarkable grasp of the broad sweep of philosophical ideas, but is also an authority in his own right. The fluency and elegance of the writing, and the sensitivity to cultural and historical context, together with the eminence of the author, will ensure a wide international readership.

—John Cottingham, University of Reading

This is simply a jolly good read, with pithy historical and biographical scene–setters, authoritative accounts of how successive philosophers have contributed to the development of Western thought, and often brilliant single–sentence summaries.

—Church Times

Sir Anthony Kenny, FBA, was born in Liverpool in 1931, and was educated at Upholland College and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. From 1963 to 1989 he was at Balliol College, Oxford, first as fellow and tutor in philosophy, and then as master. He later became warden of Rhodes House, president of the British Academy and of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and chair of the board of the British Library. In 2006 Kenny was awarded the American Catholic Philosophical Association’s Aquinas Medal for his significant contributions to philosophy.

Florence Nightingale: A Very Brief History

• Author: Lynn McDonald
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

This brief historical introduction to Florence Nightingale explores the social, political, and religious factors that formed the original context of her life and writings, and considers how those factors affected the way she was initially received. What was her impact on the world at the time and what were the key ideas and values connected with her? The second part explores the intellectual and cultural “afterlife” of Florence Nightingale, and considers the ways in which her impact has lasted and been developed in different contexts by later generations. Why is she still considered important today? In what ways is her legacy contested or resisted? And what aspects of her legacy are likely to continue to influence the world in the future?

A brilliant summary of the life and teaching of one of the greatest Christian philosophers and theologians.

—The Church of England Newspaper

Lynn McDonald is professor emerita of sociology at the University of Guelph, Canada. A former member of the Canadian House of Commons, she was president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and the New Democratic Party (NDP) Membeer of Parliament for Broadview—Greenwood, 1982–88.

Jesus: A Very Brief History

• Author: Helen K. Bond
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

With over two billion followers today, Jesus of Nazareth is the most influential person to have walked the earth. But why has he had such an enormous impact?

Written by a world authority, this brief history begins by assessing Jesus the man – his Jewish heritage, his message, his friends and enemies, and his eventual execution. Helen Bond then considers Jesus’ legacy, starting with the accounts of his life in the New Testament. She also looks at other early portrayals of Jesus, at the spread of Jesus-devotion during the Middle Ages, and at what Jesus means to people today – both in the Church and in secular culture.

Helen Bond . . . combines eloquence, mastery of the subject, and concision.

—Crux Sola

Helen Bond is professor of Christian origins at the University of Edinburgh, and director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins. She has written extensively on the Gospels, the historical Jesus, and the emergence of Christianity and has contributed to several documentaries for BBC, Discovery, and National Geographic channels.

Julian of Norwich: A Very Brief History

• Author: Janina Ramirez
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 112

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Over six hundred years ago a woman known as Julian of Norwich wrote what is now regarded as one of the greatest works of literature in English. Based on a sequence of mystical visions she received in 1373, her book is called Revelations of Divine.

Julian lived through an age of political and religious turmoil, as well as through the misery of the Black Death, and her writing engages with timeless questions about life, love and the meaning of suffering. But who was Julian of Norwich? And what can she teach us today?

Medievalist and TV historian Janina Ramirez invites you to join her in exploring Julian’s remarkable life and times, offering insights into how and why her writing has survived, and what we can learn from this fourteenth-century mystic whose work lay hidden in the shadows of her male contemporaries for far too long.

In this lively and appealing introduction, we are enabled to meet a figure who is not a stereotypical ‘mystic’ from an alien cultural world, but a vigorous, warm and deeply imaginative writer, quietly but firmly turning inside out a number of conventional understandings of the nature and work of God. Nina Ramirez presents a Julian who is very much of her own age, yet for that very reason speaks to us as a three-dimensional personality.

—Rowan Williams, author, fellow of the British Academy

Janina Ramirez is the course director on the undergraduate certificate and diploma in history of art at Oxford University. She has written and presented numerous BBC history documentaries, and is the author of The Private Lives of the Saints: Power, Passion and Politics in Anglo-Saxon England.

Paul: A Very Brief History

• Author: John M.G. Barclay
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

The revolutionary writings of St. Paul have had an incalculable impact on Western history, and continue to influence directly the two billion Christians living today.

Written by a world authority, this brief history begins by assessing what we know about Paul’s life and letters, and his impact on the Roman world of the first century. It concludes by highlighting the key elements of Paul’s thought and considering their consequences as they have played out over two millennia.

Packed with knowledge and insight, this brilliant little book offers a remarkably rich, nuanced, and readable introduction to the Apostle Paul and his legacy through the ages.

—David G. Horrell, professor of New Testament studies, University of Exeter

John M.G. Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University.

Thomas Aquinas: A Very Brief History

• Author: Brian Davies
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74) was one of the most influential philosophers of the Middle Ages, and his works continue to be widely read today. The leading classical proponent of natural theology and the founder of Thomism, he is regarded as one of the greatest Western thinkers of all time.

Written by a world authority, this brief history begins with an engaging account of Aquinas’s life and intellectual context. Thomas Aquinas goes on to explain the main contours of his thought for readers who may have no previous knowledge of him, or of academic philosophy and theology. It concludes with an informed assessment of the scale and significance of his legacy.

Brian Davies is professor of philosophy at Fordham University, New York.

Thomas More: A Very Brief History

• Author: John Guy
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

“If the English people were to be set a test to justify their history and civilization by the example of one man, then it is Sir Thomas More whom they would perhaps choose.” So commented The Times in 1978 on the 500th anniversary of More’s birth.

Twenty-two years later, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Thomas More the patron saint of politicians and people in public life, on the basis of his “constant fidelity to legitimate authority and . . . his intention to serve not power but the supreme ideal of justice.”

In this fresh assessment of More’s life and legacy, John Guy considers the factors that have given rise to such claims concerning More’s significance. Who was the real Thomas More? Was he the saintly, self-possessed hero of conscience of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons or was he the fanatical, heretic-hunting torturer of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall? Which of these images of More has the greater historical veracity? And why does this man continue to fascinate, inspire and provoke us today?

John Guy is a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He is recognised as one of Britain’s most exciting historians, having lectured extensively on early modern British history and Renaissance political thought in both Britain and the United States.

William Tyndale: A Very Brief History

• Author: Melvyn Bragg
• Series: A Very Brief History
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 144

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Within four years of William Tyndale’s execution in 1536, Henry VIII had authorized the Great Bible for the Church of England, based on Tyndale’s work to create an English translation of the Bible that was accessible for everyone to read. This Tyndale Bible, as it became known, was key in the spread of Reformation ideas across the English-speaking world, and its legacy can still be felt in translations of the Bible today. But who was William Tyndale? What inspired his great endeavor, and how did the work of a condemned heretic become so influential? Writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg invites you to explore the life and times of William Tyndale, how his legacy was formed and why it has lasted until the twenty-first century.

Eloquent . . . brilliant and very moving.

—Paul Cartledge, emeritus professor of Greek culture, University of Cambridge

Melvyn Bragg is a writer and broadcaster. His novels include The Hired Man, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, Without a City Wall, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Soldier’s Return, winner of the W.H. Smiith Literary Award, A Son of War, and Crossing the Lines, both of which were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.