Conversations About History, Volume 2

This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring emiment historians Linda Colley, John Elliott, Richard Janko, Maria Mavroudi, and Jay Rubenstein providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. The books are explicitly designed to provide a unique window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be experienced through standard lectures and textbooks. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:

I. Constitutional Investigations - A conversation with Linda Colley, the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. Linda Colley is a leading expert on British, imperial and global history since 1700. After inspiring insights about Colley's teachers and professors who had a strong impact on her future career as a historian, this wide-ranging conversation provides a detailed examination of the global history and present state of constitutions and their impact.

II. The Passionate Historian - A conversation with John Elliott, Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford. This conversation provides behind-the-scenes insights into how an undergraduate encounter with a 17th-century painting of The Count-Duke Olivares led John Elliott on a lifelong odyssey to study the history of Spain, Europe and the Americas in the early modern period to become one of the greatest Spanish historians of our age and provides a careful exploration of his research.

III. The Derveni Papyrus - A conversation with Richard Janko, Gerald F. Else Distinguished University Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan. This conversation provides a detailed examination of Richard Janko's research on the Derveni Papyrus, Europe's oldest surviving manuscript from the 4th century BCE and the most important text relating to early Greek literature, science, religion and philosophy to have come to light since the Renaissance.

IV. Byzantium: Beyond the Clich - A conversation with Maria Mavroudi, Professor of History, UC Berkeley. Maria Mavroudi specializes in the study of the Byzantine Empire and this wide-ranging conversation explores her extensive research on the Byzantine Empire and how it has repeatedly been undervalued by historians despite its having been a military and cultural powerhouse for more than a millennium.

V. Apocalypse Then: The First Crusade - A conversation with Jay Rubenstein, Professor of History an...