Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

“He chose the perspective of writing about some of Vermeer’s paintings, and taking a microscopic look at those paintings and the objects depicted in them. He then followed out from those objects to tell a story of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially 17th Century global history. Each chapter starts with a different object. There’s a beaver hat, there’s smoking, there’s the porcelain, there’s the Turkish carpets. It’s a book written for a wide audience.” Read more...

The best books on Global History

Maxine Berg, Historian

“This is a way of unpicking particular remnants from the past — in this case fantastic paintings — and looking at the bigger picture that they tell.” Read more...

The best books on Microhistory

Jonathan Healey, Historian