MATC Libraries

Approved Reading List for Making of Modern Europe 1450-1815 (Ryan)

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Note: Click on a title to see more information; a new window will open when you click a title. A print copy of this list is also available at the Truax library circulation desk.

133.43 L65
The witch-hunt in early modern Europe / Brian P. Levack
(A well-researched, reasoned approach to the witch hunts, informative but a bit plodding.)

133.43094 B28
Witchcraze : a new history of the European witch hunts / Anne Llewellyn Barstow
(A lively and gut-wrenching analyses of the violence of the witch hunts. A passionate arguably feminist account that has been stridently criticized.)

133.43094 B854
Witches & neighbours : the social and cultural context of European witchcraft / Robin Briggs
(A model study of witchcraft that grounds the persecution in relations between neighbors. An excellent but often difficult book.)

133.43094 W819
Witchcraft in early modern Europe : studies in culture and belief / edited by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts.
(A good collection of essays but this it’s harder to read than the other witch hunt monographs mentioned.)

270.6 B16W
Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy / by Roland H. Bainton
(A good survey but student reviewers regularly contend that Bainton spends more time writing about male Reformation figures than women.)

274.2 H18
Liberty and reformation in the Puritan Revolution / William Haller

272.20946 K18
Inquisition and society in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Henry Kamen
(Kamen’s a “rock-star” historian of early modern Spain and this is an excellent study.)

274 OZ99
The age of reform (1250-1550) : an intellectual and religioushistory of late medieval and Reformation Europe / Steven Ozment
(Ozment’s a highly regarded historian and this is an excellent and interesting survey.)

305.4094 K53
Women of the Renaissance / Margaret L. King
(A straightforward and pioneering account of women’s role in the Renaissance.)

305.4094 W65
Women and gender in early modern Europe / Merry E. Wiesner
(A stimulating and intensive examination of the subject in survey form—excellent book by a UW-Milwaukee historian.)

306.709421 G261
City of laughter : sex and satire in eighteenth-century London / Vic Gatrell

306.8094 OZ99
When fathers ruled : family life in Reformation Europe / Steven Ozment
(Another good Ozment book.)

364.1523 B847
A sentimental murder : love and madness in the eighteenth century / John Brewer
(Students who have selected this book have liked it.)

364.942 AL337
Albion's fatal tree : crime and society in eighteenth-century England / Douglas Hay ... [et al.]. As of Jan 08 this copy had a note in the record as "lost and paid".
(A pioneering collection of essays that redirected research concerning eighteenth century Europe. The essays have been harshly criticized, but they are wonderful examinations between crime and social control and rebellion.)

509.24 L582
Leonardo da Vinci / Ubyu V. P. Zubov. Translated from the Russian by David H. Kraus
(A difficult biography of da Vinci; students new to Da Vinci should look elsewhere.)

635.93432 D229
Tulipomania : the story of the world's most coveted flower and the extraordinary passions it aroused / Mike Dash
(An interesting survey of floral hysteria.)

759.9492 R385S
Rembrandt's eyes / by Simon Schama
(An well written and intriguing study by one of the English-speaking world’s most popular academic historians.)

759.9492 SW4
Rembrandt : his life, his paintings / Gary Schwartz

914.032 D54
The age of humanism and reformation: Europe in the fourteenth,fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries / Ubyu A. G. Dickens
(A dense survey that deals with a complex bit of intellectual historical terrain.)

920.7209 D263
Women on the margins : three seventeenth-century lives / Natalie Zemon Davis.
(A well-written study but student reviewers think Zemon-Davis effectively examines all of her subjects.)

922.443 L97B
Here I stand; a life of Martin Luther / Bainton, Roland Herbert, 1894-
(A classic biography of Martin Luther that arguably constructs a heroic rather than a human Luther. However, this remains arguably the best English-language biography of Luther.)

922.443 L97E
Young man Luther; a study in psychoanalysis and history
(An influential psychoanalytical biography of Luther who never reclined on Freud’s couch. Interesting if arguably ahistorical reading!)

940.21 H16
The civilization of Europe in the Renaissance / John Hale.
(Good survey by an excellent historian.)

940.22 M96
Seventeenth century Europe : state, conflict, and the social lorder in Europe, 1598-1700 / Thomas Munck.
(A solid, dense-packed survey that is best read in twenty-page chunks.)

940.23 M15
Sixteenth century Europe : expansion and conflict / Richard Mackenney.

940.23 SM65
The age of the Reformation / Smith, Preserved.
(A classic pro-Reformation account of the Reformation.)

940.232 K78
Europe in the sixteenth century / H. G. Koenigsberger andGeorge L. Mosse.
(Internationally renowned [deceased]UW-historian George Mosse co-authored this serviceable survey.)

940.24 P4
Europe in the seventeenth century. / D.H. Pennington.
(At one time, Pennington’s book served as the textbook for instructors teaching seventeenth century European history courses.)

940.25 T78
The making of modern Europe, 1648-1780 / Geoffrey Treasure.
(A very thick narrative survey of Early Modern Europe that has gone back into print.)

940.253 B627
Eighteenth-century Europe, 1700-1789 / Jeremy Black.

940.27 B234
The battle : a new history of Waterloo / Alessandro Barbero
(A detail-filled analysis of Waterloo that is excellent for readers who know little about the subject.)

940.27 C779
Napoleon and the Hundred Days / Stephen Coote.
(An excellent account of Napoleon’s last bid to return to power.)

940.27 R643
Waterloo: June 18, 1815: the battle for modern Europe / Andrew Roberts.
(Unapologetically pro-British but a fine account of the last Napoleonic battle.)

940.2745 AD236
Nelson's Trafalgar : the battle that changed the world / Roy Adkins
(Excellent narrative of a hugely significant naval battle.)

941 SCH299W
A history of Britain. Volume 2, The wars of the British ; 1603-1776 / Simon Schama.
(Fast-moving survey.)

941 C698
Captives :Britain, Empire and the world, 1600-1850 / Linda Colley

941.06 H64C
Change and continuity in seventeenth-century England/ Christopher Hill.
(Excellent survey by a wonderful English Marxist historian.)

941.06 OR69
The origins of Empire : British overseas enterprise to the close of the seventeenth century / Nicholas Canny, editor ; Alaine Low

941.06 UN55
Revel, riot, and rebellion : popular politics and culture inEngland, 1603-1660 / David Underdown.
(A dense, detailed, but interesting local study of the English Civil War.)

941.060922 C283
Court lady and country wife : two noble sisters in seventeenth-century England / Lita-Rose Betcherman

941.07 EI34
The Eighteenth century / P.J. Marshall, editor

941.105092 M393G
Queen of Scots : the true life of Mary Stuart / John Guy.

942.SH53
Early modern England: a social history 1550-1760 / J.A.Sharpe.
(Excellent survey study.)

942.05 B854
New worlds, lost worlds : the rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 / Susan Brigden.

942.05 EN58
England under the Tudors / by G. R. Elton.
(A classic survey that reflects Elton’s claim that the Tudors revolutionized royal government in England.)

942.05 R455
The Tudors / Richard Bex.

942.05 W187
Power and protest in England, 1525-1640 / Alison Wall

942.05 W726
The later Tudors : England, 1547-1603 / Penry Williams.

942.052 SC28
Henry VIII / by J. J. Scarisbrick
(A wonderful biography written by an eminent historian who takes a more critical view of the Henrician Reformation.)

942.0520922 F84
The wives of Henry VIII / Antonia Fraser.
(Excellent narrative history of the women who were married to a regularly less than ideal spouse.)

942.0550924 H14
Elizabeth I / Christopher Haigh.
(Haigh’s biography does not glorify Elizabeth but presents a “revisionist” view of the Virgin Queen.)

942.055092 SO69
Elizabeth I / Anne Somerset.

942.0550924 D76C
Francis Drake : the lives of a hero / John Cummins.

942.052092 M83AC
The life of Thomas More / Peter Ackroyd.

942.055092 SH561L
Bess of Hardwick : empire builder / Mary S. Lovell

942.052092 ST795
Six wives : the queens of Henry VIII / David Starkey.
(A good study but students prefer Fraser’s study.)

942.055092 EL43W
The life of Elizabeth I / Alison Weir. Br> (Weir’s a popular historian who regularly irritates academic historians but non-academic readers buy her books.)

942.0520924 B688D
Anne Boleyn : a new life of England's tragic queen / Joanna Denny

942.055 H251
The confident hope of a miracle : the true history of the Spanish Armada / Neil Hanson.

942.06 C59
The later Stuarts, 1660-1714 / by Sir George Clark.
(Stodgy but good traditional survey.)

942.06 H716
God's secret agents : Queen Elizabeth's forbidden priests and the hatching of the Gunpowder Plot / Alice Hogg
(Hogg writes passionately about “God’s Secret Agents but student reviewers find her analysis less than convincing. Still, students recommend the book because of the intrinsic interest of the subject.)

942.12 T591
By permission of heaven : the story of the Great Fire of London / Adrian Tinniswood.
(Good study of a horrific event.)

942.33 UN55
Fire from heaven : life in an English town in the seventeenth century / David Underdown.
(Student reviewers like Underdown’s study.)

943.004924 H873
The myth of ritual murder : Jews and magic in Reformation Germany / R. Po-chia Hsia.
(An excellent study of the creation of the blood libel, and, more broadly, European anti-Semitism.)

943.471031092 B977O
The Burgermeister's daughter : scandal in a sixteenth-century German town / Steven Ozment.
(Great biography of a “troublesome” wife and daughter! Despite the unfamiliarity of German names and place names, student reviewers enjoy the book.)

943.51507 L743
Liaisons dangereuses : sex, law, and diplomacy in the age of Frederick the Great / Mary Lindemann

944.028 K68
The rise and fall of Renaissance France, 1483-1610 / R.J. Knecht.

944.028092 C363K
Catherine De' Medici / R.J. Knecht.

944.028092 C363F
Catherine de Medici : Renaissance queen of France / Leonie Frieda.

944.03 OL44
Old Regime France, 1648-1788 / edited by Willam Doyle.

944.033092 EL47
Princesse of Versailles : the life of Marie Adelaide of Savoy / Charles Elliott.

944.033092 L888
Love and Louis XIV : the women in the life of the Sun King / Antonia Fraser
(According to Fraser, Louis XIV wasn’t a warm-hearted—not cold-hearted—serial adulterer.)

944.033092 L888D
Louis XIV / Ian Dunlop.
(Solid introductory biography.)

944.035092 M334L
Marie Antoinette : the last queen of France / by Evelyne Lever
(A sympathetic portrait of a controversial monarch.)

944.035092 N147
Marie-Thérèse, child of terror : the fate of Marie Antoinette's daughter / Susan Nagel

944.05092 N21S
Napoleon Bonaparte / Alan Schom.
(Schom sees nothing but bloodshed, devastation, and despotism in Napoleon and challenges any sort of positive depiction of the Emperor of France.)

944.035092 M334F
Marie Antoinette : the journey / Antonia Fraser.
(A good biography of Marie Antoinette that served as the basis for the recent biopic.)

944.044 F469
The Terror : the shadow of the guillotine : France 1792-1794 / Graeme Fife
(An excellent accessible and student-friendly account of the Terror.)

945 M385
Power and imagination : city-states in Renaissance Italy / by Lauro Martines.

945.06092 D357
The pope's daughter : [the extraordinary life of Felice della Rovere] / Caroline P. Murphy

945.51 B88
Renaissance Florence / Gene Brucker.

945.51 H62
The House of Medici, its rise and fall / Christopher Hibbert.

945.5105092 SA268
Fire in the city : Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence / by Lauro Martines

945.51050922 SP757
The Spinelli of Florence : fortunes of a Renaissance merchant family / Philip Jacks and William Caferro

945.51107092 M978
Murder of a Medici princess / Caroline P. Murphy

945.606092 B644B
Lucrezia Borgia : life, love, and death in Renaissance Italy / Sarah Bradford.
(Students select this book but are often frustrated with this analysis of Pope Julius II’s daughter but do find this a fairly easy book to understand.)

946 K15
Spain, 1469-1714 : a society of conflict / Henry Kamen

946.03092 IS741
Isabel the Queen : life and times / Peggy K. Liss.

946.055092 K15
Philip V of Spain : the king who reigned twice / Henry Kamen

947 L722
Empire : the Russian Empire and its rivals / Dominic Lieven
(Good account by an eminent diplomatic historian.)

947.04 P34
Ivan the Terrible. / Robert Payne and Nikita Romanoff.

947.043092 IV93D
Ivan the Terrible : first tsar of Russia / Isabel de Madariaga
(Primarily an expert in eighteenth century Russia, de Madariaga writes a solid biography about Ivan.)

947.043092 IV93P
Ivan the Terrible / Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie.
(Student wanting to read a description of Ivan’s spectacular acts of violence will be disappointed in this biography.)

947.06092 AN599
Five empresses : court life in eighteenth-century Russia / Evgenii V. Anisimov

947.063092 C363E
Great Catherine / Carolly Erickson.
(Popular much criticized history of Catherine the Great.)

947.063092 C363D
Catherine the Great / Simon Dixon.

947.063092 C363DE
Catherine the Great : a short history / Isabel De Madariaga.

J. Ryan / D. Marconnet

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Last Modified: September 10 2008