"A work of erudition and great originality on a hitherto totally neglected, but curious and interesting subject: the 'nonsense poetry' of the early 17th century. It is only through Mr. Malcolm's brilliant scholarship that we can appreciate this missing chapter of literary history." Sunday Telegraph "An elegant, enjoyable book which is a real contribution to literary history." Financial Times

The Origins of English Nonsense

Literature & Fiction

Malcolm, Noel

History & Criticism

Harpercollins Pub, Ltd.

Kosovo: A Short History

"Malcolm's narrative is gripping, even brilliant at times. . . . He takes to his task with the vigor of a detective driven by true passion. At times his claims are, in terms of Balkan history,quite revolutionary."

History

Europe

Harper-perennial

In the second half of the sixteenth century, most of the Christian states of Western Europe were on the defensive against a Muslim superpower - the Empire of the Ottoman sultans. There was violent conflict, from raiding and corsairing to large-scale warfare, but there were also many forms of peaceful interaction across the surprisingly porous frontiers of these opposing power-blocs. Agents of Empire describes the paths taken through the eastern Mediterranean and its European hinterland by members of a Venetian-Albanian family, almost all of them previously invisible to history. They include an archbishop in the Balkans, the captain of the papal flagship at the Battle of Lepanto, the power behind the throne in the Ottoman province of Moldavia, and a dragoman (interpreter) at the Venetian embassy in Istanbul. Through the life-stories of these adventurous individuals over three generations, Noel Malcolm casts the world between Venice, Rome and the Ottoman Empire in a fresh light, illuminating subjects as diverse as espionage, diplomacy, the grain trade, slave-ransoming and anti-Ottoman rebellion. He describes the conflicting strategies of the Christian powers, and the extraordinarily ambitious plans of the sultans and their viziers. Few works since Fernand Braudel's classic account of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, published more than sixty years ago, have ranged so widely through this vital period of Mediterranean and European history. A masterpiece of scholarship as well as story-telling, Agents of Empire builds up a panoramic picture, both of Western power-politics and of the interrelations between the Christian and Ottoman worlds.

Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the 16th-Century Mediterranean World

Penguin Press

In the late sixteenth century, a prominent Albanian named Antonio Bruni composed a revealing document about his home country. Historian Sir Noel Malcolm takes this document as a point of departure to explore the lives of the entire Bruni family, whose members included an archbishop of the Balkans, the captain of the papal flagship at the Battle of Lepanto--at which the Ottomans were turned back in the Eastern Mediterranean--in 1571, and a highly placed interpreter in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire that fell to the Turks in 1453. The taking of Constantinople had profoundly altered the map of the Mediterranean. By the time of Bruni's document, Albania, largely a Venetian province from 1405 onward, had been absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. Even under the Ottomans, however, this was a world marked by the ferment of the Italian Renaissance.\nIn Agents of Empire, Malcolm uses the collective biography of the Brunis to paint a fascinating and intimate picture of Albania at a moment when it represented the frontier between empires, cultures, and religions. The lives of the polylingual, cosmopolitan Brunis shed new light on the interrelations between the Ottoman and Christian worlds, characterized by both conflict and complex interdependence. The result of years of archival detective work, Agents of Empire brings to life a vibrant moment in European and Ottoman history, challenging our assumptions about their supposed differences. Malcolm's book guides us through the exchanges between East and West, Venetians and the Ottomans, and tells a story of worlds colliding with and transforming one another.

Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits, and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World

Oxford University Press

In the late sixteenth century, a prominent Albanian named Antonio Bruni composed a revealing document about his home country. Historian Sir Noel Malcolm takes this document as a point of departure to explore the lives of the entire Bruni family, whose members included an archbishop of the Balkans, the captain of the papal flagship at the Battle of Lepanto--at which the Ottomans were turned back in the Eastern Mediterranean--in 1571, and a highly placed interpreter in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire that fell to the Turks in 1453. The taking of Constantinople had profoundly altered the map of the Mediterranean. By the time of Bruni's document, Albania, largely a Venetian province from 1405 onward, had been absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. Even under the Ottomans, however, this was a world marked by the ferment of the Italian Renaissance. In Agents of Empire, Malcolm uses the collective biography of the Brunis to paint a fascinating and intimate picture of Albania at a moment when it represented the frontier between empires, cultures, and religions. The lives of the polylingual, cosmopolitan Brunis shed new light on the interrelations between the Ottoman and Christian worlds, characterized by both conflict and complex interdependence. The result of years of archival detective work, Agents of Empire brings to life a vibrant moment in European and Ottoman history, challenging our assumptions about their supposed differences. Malcolm's book guides us through the exchanges between East and West, Venetians and the Ottomans, and tells a story of worlds colliding with and transforming one another.

Writing in 1939, the historian of mathematics Herbert Turnbull described John Pell as 'a mysterious figure' and commented: 'he may well prove to be an unsuspected genius, for his manuscripts appear to survive, unexamined, in the British Museum.' Turnbull's expectations were pitched a little too high: although Pell was a man of unusual intellectual abilities, and one of the leading mathematicians of his day, his work does not merit any use of the term 'genius'. The term 'mysterious', on the other hand, was well deserved; and no less mysterious is the fact that the great majority of Pell's voluminous manuscripts have remained almost entirely unexamined for more than sixty years after Turnbull published those comments. This first full length biography of John Pell (1611-1685) by Malcolm and Stedall reconstructs the life and times of this central and enigmatic mathematician and scholar. The text consists of over 600 pages and is presented in three parts: Part 1 "The life of John Pell (1611-1685)" is a thoroughly researched new account of Pell's life; Part 2 "The mathematics of John Pell" explores Pell's contribution to mathematics; and Part 3 "The Pell-Cavendish correspondence" is the first complete edition of Pell's correspondence, with detailed annotations. For historians of mathematics and science, philosophers, social and political historians and early modern intellectual historians, this superb work of scholarship is essential reading.

John Pell (1611-1685) and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician

Science & Math

Stedall, Jacqueline

Mathematics

From the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the eighteenth century, many Western European writers viewed the Ottoman Empire with almost obsessive interest. Typically they reacted to it with fear and distrust; and such feelings were reinforced by the deep hostility of Western Christendom towards Islam. Yet there was also much curiosity about the social and political system on which the huge power of the sultans was based. In the sixteenth century, especially, when Ottoman territorial expansion was rapid and Ottoman institutions seemed particularly robust, there was even open admiration. In this path-breaking book Noel Malcolm ranges through these vital centuries of East-West interaction, studying all the ways in which thinkers in the West interpreted the Ottoman Empire as a political phenomenon - and Islam as a political religion. Useful Enemies shows how the concept of 'oriental despotism' began as an attempt to turn the tables on a very positive analysis of Ottoman state power, and how, as it developed, it interacted with Western debates about monarchy and government. Noel Malcolm also shows how a negative portrayal of Islam as a religion devised for political purposes was assimilated by radical writers, who extended the criticism to all religions, including Christianity itself. Examining the works of many famous thinkers (including Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montesquieu) and many less well-known ones, Useful Enemies illuminates the long-term development of Western ideas about the Ottomans, and about Islam. Noel Malcolm shows how these ideas became intertwined with internal Western debates about power, religion, society, and war. Discussions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire were thus bound up with mainstream thinking in the West on a wide range of important topics. These Eastern enemies were not just there to be denounced. They were there to be made use of, in arguments which contributed significantly to the development of Western political thought.

Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750

Thanks to its half-century under Communism, as well as its little-known language, Albania has suffered from neglect and a sense of isolation. Yet, as this study helps to show, the Albanian lands have a long history of interaction with others. They have been a meeting-ground of Christianity andIslam; a channel through which Venice connected with the Ottoman Balkans; a place of interest to the Habsburgs; and a focus for the ambitions of neighbouring powers in the late Ottoman period. Albanians themselves could have many different identities.The studies in this volume, by one of the world's leading experts on Albanian history, range from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, taking in politics, social history, religion and diplomacy. Each is based on original research; the longest, on Ali Pasha, uses a wealth of manuscript material totell, for the first time, the full story of the vital role he played in the international politics of the Napoleonic Wars. Other studies bring to life ordinary individuals hitherto unknown to history: women hauled before the Inquisition, for example, or the author of the first Albanianautobiography.Some of these studies have been printed before (several in hard-to-find publications, and one only in Albanian), but the greater part of this book appears here for the first time. This is not only a landmark publication for readers interested in south-east European history. It also engages with manybroader issues, including religious conversion, "crypto-Christianity" among Muslims, methods of enslavement within the Ottoman Empire, and the nature of modern myth-making about national identity.

Rebels, Believers, Survivors: Studies in the History of the Albanians

Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state".

Reason of State, Propaganda and the Thirty Years' War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes

Clarendon Press

These essays are the fruit of many years' research by one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars. Noel Malcolm offers not only succinct introductions to Hobbes's life and thought, but also path-breaking studies of many different aspects of his political philosophy, his scientific and religious theories, his relations with his contemporaries, the sources of his ideas, the printing history of his works, and his influence on European thought.

Aspects of Hobbes

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Malcolm, Noel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Malcolm, Noel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Malcolm, Noel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Origins of English Nonsense

Kosovo: A Short History

Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the 16th-Century Mediterranean World

Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits, and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World

Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits, and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World

John Pell (1611-1685) and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician

Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750

Rebels, Believers, Survivors: Studies in the History of the Albanians

Reason of State, Propaganda and the Thirty Years' War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes

Aspects of Hobbes