The Mirror Effect - How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America

Informed and provocative, with the warm and empathetic perspective that has won Dr. Drew Pinsky legions of fans, The Mirror Effect raises important questions about our changing culture—and provides insights for parents, young people, and anyone who wonders what celebrity culture is doing to America.

Knightley Academy

Henry Grim has never been in trouble for borrowing a sword from the headmaster's private stores. He has never discovered a forbidden room in a foreign castle, or received a death threat over breakfast.
All Henry knows is life as an orphaned servant boy at the Midsummer School, bullied by the privileged sons of aristocracy. But all that changes when Henry is the first commoner to pass the entrance exam for the prestigious Knightley Academy, where he will be trained as a modern-day knight alongside the cleverest and bravest fourteen-year-olds in the country.

Women and the Practice of Medical Care in early Modern Europe 1400 - 1800

Women have been engaged in well-being, care-giving, and healing, often within the context of the home, since earliest times. In this book, Leigh Whaley studies the role, contributions, and challenges faced by women healers in Early Modern Europe, c.1400-1800. With a focus on the countries of France, Spain, Italy and England, she includes the role of medical practice among women in the Jewish and Muslim communities.  Providing an introduction to the work performed by various kinds of female medical practitioners, healers and writers, the book also considers the various attitudes towards the woman healer and stresses the importance of gender in the healing arts.
 

Tortured Subjects - pain, Truth and the Body in Early Modern France

At one time in Europe, there was a point to pain: physical suffering could be a path to redemption. This religious notion suggested that truth was lodged in the body and could be achieved through torture. In Tortured Subjects, Lisa Silverman tells the haunting story of how this idea became a fixed part of the French legal system during the early modern period.

Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France

A bold new study of politics and power in 17th-century France, this book argues that the French Crown centralized its power nationally by changing the way it delegated its royal patronage in the provinces. During this period, the royal government of Paris gradually extended its sphere of control by taking power away from the powerful and potentially disloyal provincial governors and nobility and instead putting it in the hands of provincial power brokers--regional notables who cooperated with the Paris ministers in exchange for their patronage.