Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2886

Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2886

Eighteen non-fiction titles spanning natural science, Renaissance art, Medici banking, WWII history, and literary biography — Darwin and da Vinci, Pasteur and John Reed, the Yorkshire Ripper and the Buddha. A genuinely eclectic box with serious depth.

1. The Origin of Species — Charles Darwin, ed. J.W. Burrow (Pelican) — The book that changed everything: Darwin's argument for evolution by natural selection, presented in an edition edited with full scholarly apparatus.
2. Chomsky — John Lyons (Fontana Modern Masters) — A lucid introduction to Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories and their philosophical implications — one of the best volumes in the acclaimed Fontana Modern Masters series.
3. The Misery of Christianity — Joachim Kahl — A blunt and provocative plea for a humanity without God, written by a former theology student and widely read during the 1960s debates about religion and secular humanism.
4. The Yorkshire Ripper — Michael Nicholson — A factual, fully illustrated account of the Peter Sutcliffe case — the investigation, the errors, and the women whose deaths exposed the failings of the West Yorkshire police.
5. The Weaker Vessel — Antonia Fraser — A landmark work of social history examining women's lives in seventeenth-century England — their legal status, domestic roles, and the remarkable individuals who defied them.
6. Memphis Belle — Monte Merrick — The true story of the B-17 bomber and her crew, whose completion of twenty-five missions over Europe became a symbol of WWII American courage — the book of the major motion picture.
7. Young Thomas Hardy — Robert Gittings — The first of Gittings's two-volume Hardy biography, covering the poet and novelist's Dorset origins and the formative experiences that shaped his imagination.
8. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters — ed. Francis Darwin — Darwin in his own words: the memoir he wrote for his family, alongside selected correspondence that illuminates his method and his character.
9. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 — Raymond de Roover — A scholarly study of the financial institution that funded the Florentine Renaissance — essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the economics behind the art.
10. James the Fourth — Robert Greene, ed. Norman Sanders (The Revels Plays) — A scholarly edition of Robert Greene's late sixteenth-century drama, situating the play in its political and theatrical context with full critical apparatus.
11. The Life of Pasteur — René Vallery-Radot — The biography of Louis Pasteur by his son-in-law — the foundational account of one of science's most consequential lives, written with access no later biographer could match.
12. Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed — Robert A. Rosenstone — The incredible story of the American journalist whose Ten Days That Shook the World made him a legend — the life that inspired the film Reds.
13. Sand, Sweat and Camels / Australian Aviator: Sir Norman Brearley — George F. and Edmée M. Langley — Two books in one: true Australian tales of desert adventure and the story of the aviation pioneer who built the foundations of Australian commercial flight.
14. In the Footsteps of the Buddha — René Grousset — A scholarly and meditative account of Buddhism's origins, spread, and spiritual core — Grousset brings to the subject the same learning he brought to his history of Central Asian civilisations.
15. The United States and Europe: Rivals and Partners — Max Silberschmidt — A mid-century analysis of the transatlantic relationship — its tensions, dependencies, and the question of whether rivalry or partnership would define it.
16. The Land Question and European Society — Frank E. Huggett (Library of European Civilisation, Thames and Hudson) — A richly illustrated history of land ownership and rural society in Europe from the medieval period to the modern era.
17. The Rise of the Artist in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance — Andrew Martindale (Thames and Hudson) — A beautifully illustrated study of how the artist emerged as a distinct professional and social figure in medieval and Renaissance Europe.
18. A Bridge Too Far — Cornelius Ryan — The definitive account of Operation Market Garden — the audacious Allied airborne assault on the bridges of Holland in September 1944 that failed by the narrowest of margins.