Hamish Scott has published extensively on eighteenth-century international relations, government and enlightened absolutism, and on the early modern nobility. He taught for many years at the University of St Andrews, and is now attached to the University of Glasgow. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he is currently completing a major study, Forming Aristocracy: The reconfiguration of the European Nobility, which is to be published by Oxford University Press.

• 1. Introduction: 'Early Modern' Europe and the Idea of Early Modernity ; 2. The Early Modern Emergence of 'Europe'? ; 3. Weather, Climate, and the Environment ; 4. Disease and Medicine ; 5. Demography ; 6. Time ; 7. Travel and Communications ; 8. Print and Printedness ; 9. Languages and Literacy ; 10. A Revolution in Information? ; 11. Economic and Social Trends ; 12. The Social Order ; 13. Families and Households ; 14. Sexual Identity and the Family ; 15. Consumption and Material Life ; 16. The Agrarian West ; 17. The Agrarian East ; 18. Country and Town in Mediterranean Europe ; 19. Towns and Urbanisation ; 20. Manufacturing ; 21. The Christian Church, 1370-1550 ; 22. Protestantism and Its Adherents ; 23. Early Modern Catholicism ; 24. The World of Orthodoxy ; 25. The Transformations of Judaism ; 26. Islam within Europe ; 27. The Culture of Peoples ; 28. Belief and its Limits

the very real achievement the two volumes represent ... will be valuable indeed as introductions, for those, students and established scholars alike, seeking to find their conceptual and bibliographical footing in unfamiliar terrain.