'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics with the words of historians, diarists and novelists, poets and churchmen: Pepys, Boswell, Fielding, Walpole, Blake, Mayhew, Wells, Woolf, Spark, ... a timely and brilliant book.' CLAIRE TOMALIN, EVENING STANDARD 'A vivid celebration of the city, but also an elegy for its decline, bubbling with statistics and anecdote, from Boadicea to Betjeman.' RICHARD HOLMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR

London: A Social History

History

Roy, Porter

Europe

Penguin Uk

Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world

For generations the traditional focus for those wishing to understand the roots of the modern world has been France on the eve of the Revolution. Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but here makes an overwhelming case for consideringBritain the true home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to twentieth-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution of 1688, had emerged as something new and extraordinary - a society unlike any other in the world.

Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine

Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both frightening and elating. Startlingly illustrated, "A Short History of Medicine" is the ideal present for anyone who is keenly aware of their own mortality and wants to do something about it. It is also a wonderful memorial to one of Penguin's greatest historians.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Penguin??Books

"Ideas tumble out of Porter like wonders from some scholarly horn of plenty." ―Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic An eminently readable, entertaining romp through the history of our vain and valiant efforts to heal ourselves. Mankind's battle to stay alive and healthy for as long as possible is our oldest, most universal struggle. With his characteristic wit and vastly informed historical scope, Roy Porter examines the war fought between disease and doctors on the battleground of the flesh from ancient times to the present. He explores the many ingenious ways in which we have attempted to overcome disease through the the changing role of doctors, from ancient healers, apothecaries, and blood-letters to today's professionals; the array of drugs, from Ayurvedic remedies to the launch of Viagra; the advances in surgery, from amputations performed by barbers without anesthetic to today's sophisticated transplants; and the transformation of hospitals from Christian places of convalescence to modern medical powerhouses. Cleverly illustrated with historic line drawings, the chronic ailments of humanity provide vivid anecdotes for Porter's enlightening story of medicine's efforts to prevail over a formidable and ever-changing adversary.

Medical Books

E-Penguin

Blood and Guts A Short History of Medicine

Penguin books, limited

Madness A Brief History

OUP Oxford

Focusing selectively upon his subjects, Porter here explores the thoughts and feelings of a number of insane people, primarily making use of their own writings. His aim is not to analyze the subconscious motivations of the insane, but to determine the intentions of their conscious minds.

A social history of madness: Stories of the insane

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

A través de los escritos autobiográficos de un buen número de «locos» famosos (Schumann, Nijinski, Virginia Woolf...), el doctor Roy Porter trata de hacer llegar hasta nosotros las experiencias vitales, la sensibilidad y la visión del mundo de aquellos seres pretendidamente anormales, u ello no tanto desde sus supuestas patologías individuales como desde el entramado ideológico común del que forman parte los locos, los psiquiatras y la sociedad misma. Los locos son gentes de su tiempo, reflejos de una época que los condiciona, pero que ellos también contribuyen a forjar. ¿Por qué, si no, hubo tantos maníacos religiosos durante la Reforma y tantos exorcistas expertos para curarlos? O ¿por qué la Viena finisecular produjo numerosos pacientes con trastornos sexuales, curados por freudianos obsesionados a su vez con la sexualidad? Las palabras de los locos, evocadas en este libro, configurar un mundo al otro lado del espejo en el que se refleja la sociedad «cuerda», su hipocresía y su insensbilidad, hija casi siempre del prejuicio y la ignorancia.

A SOCIAL HISTORY OF MADNESS: STORIES OF THE INSANE

Dutton

Hysteria Beyond Freud

Sander L. Gilman

Elaine Showalter

Helen King

G. S. Rousseau

Univ. of California Press

Future Plagues: Biohazard, Disease and Pestilence - Mankind's Battle for Survival

PETER BROOKESMITH

Cassell Illustrated*

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Books by Roy, Porter