What was a Puritan? Christopher Hill's magisterial book on Puritanism in the decades leading up to the Civil War is a highly readable work of impressive scholarship. Originally Puritanism seems to have been a term of abuse directed at critics of the established church of England. The author notes that it was applied to Sir Walter Raleigh, Inigo Jones, King James and even the Catholic courtiers of Queen Henrietta Maria. Later the word came to be applied to those who pushed for reform from within the church. Strict sabbath-keeping and opposition to popery came to be its defining features, though as with any political movement there were innumerable variations. A contemporary commentator, Henry Parker, defined four different areas in which Puritan beliefs operated: church policy, theological belief, relations with the king and state, and personal and private morality. Later the word came to mean a kill-joy, but in the early years the meaning was much more precise. Politically Puritans were men of property, not anarchists, and in the church courts they started to demand more rigorous discipline on the suppression of blasphemy and loose living. In the religious sphere, preaching was the dominant mode of Puritanism, driven by the need to make congregations understand the basics of religious belief following centuries of Catholicism in which the mass was performed in Latin. Popular preachers began to have their own cult following and anxieties were expressed that they were creating congregations with little contact with the established church. This was particularly the case with the tradition of itinerant Lecturers, freelance clergy who had been ordained but who were not attached to a church or subject to the authority of a bishop, and often had private patrons. As the movement fragmented, private household prayers also came under scrutiny as possibly promoting unorthodox doctrine, creating a culture of suspicion. 452pp, paperback, footnotes.

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is one of the great classics of English Literature, arising out of the Puritan religion that was at the heart of England's Civil War and Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. Christopher Hill was a leading historian of the 17th century and this biography of Bunyan aims to "set Bunyan against the history of his own turbulent times". Bunyan joined Cromwell's Parliamentary army in 1644 and was discharged in 1647. The following years led to his conversion and are described in his autobiographical account Grace Abounding. Bunyan was well-versed in the Bible but had a strong sense of his own sin, and came to oppose the popular movements led by Ranters and Quakers because they did not give him assurance of salvation. For Bunyan, conversion was not a once and for all event but had constantly to be renewed, and the story of the Pilgrim's Progress is one in which the hero, Christian, has to overcome recurring temptations and soldier on in spite of the ravages of Despair. In common with most Puritans, Bunyan regarded preaching as the chief means of salvation, and his work as a popular preacher led in 1660 to his being imprisoned for 12 years for seditious activity. His wife and five children struggled to support themselves, and prison conditions were often harsh, but he was able to receive visitors and also to write Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress. At the Palace Beautiful, signifying the congregation of the faithful, the pilgrim is given a sword and armour, and this reflects the liberation experienced by the New Model Army, where ordinary working people like Bunyan were supplied with arms. A fascinating study combining history, theology and literary analysis. 394pp, paperback, footnotes.

The communist manifesto of 1848 outlined the beginnings of an idea that was to change world history. Although Marx's "spectre haunting Europe" was a revolutionary spirit which is irresistible because it represents the mobilisation of the workers, the manifesto was an ideological document, not a programme for practical action. Yet the history of Communism is one of repression and brutality. This fascinating global study seeks to balance the two driving forces of theory and practice that made Communism a global phenomenon, and finally examines how the party idea degenerated into a tool for personal despotism in the twentieth century. By 1902, as the movement emerged from the 19th century disturbances such as the Paris Commune, Lenin took the lead in creating a centralised body of disciplined professionals to awaken the slumbering proletariat. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks fought for power, with an important staging point being the 1919 Third Comintern, and on Lenin's death in 1924 the dominant ideology was openly named Leninism as Joseph Stalin was designated the new Secretary of the Russian Communist Party. By 1927 Mao Zedong was calling for a different kind of revolution in China, focusing his Hunan Report on the prospect of a peasant uprising, rather than the top-down elitist revolution of Marx and Lenin. In 1943 Stalin dissolved the Comintern, opening the way for unchallenged brutality, and Mao moved towards the bonfires of the Cultural Revolution. Following Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev led a plot against his henchman Beria and emerged as a leader who ruled by humiliating his colleagues. Finally the glasnost of Gorbachev briefly opened up the party. In spite of the eastern European modifications of the 1970s, and China's attempt at legitimation in the eighties, the idea of an enlightened Communism started to decline in Russia, China, Cuba, north Korea, Vietnam and Laos. 564pp, photos.

The Egyptologist and lecturer for the British Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum Delia Pemberton has created a beautiful book on the treasures, wisdom and spirituality of Buddhism. Through carefully selected words and pictures she presents the fascinating events of his life, a summary of his teachings, the Cosmic Buddhas, paradise, the afterlife, and the future. Long popular among Western art lovers and collectors, these objects include lacquered wood figures from Japan, painted textiles from Tibet, a Buddhist Stupa in India, a limestone drum slab, gold reliquary set with garnets, huge statues, silk paintings and panels, a huge monk statue in the Prayer Hall in Rangoon, illuminated manuscripts, bronze figures from Java and stones inscribed with Buddhist mantras in Dharamsala, India. 'In the Pure Land, all material needs are met and conditions are perfect for receiving the Dharma teachings continually provided by the presiding Buddha. Those beings fortunate enough to be reborn into a Pure Land are thus guaranteed to attain Enlightenment in the future.' 47 colour illustrations, 96pp.

Designer, poet and artist as well as the author of the utopian novel 'News from Nowhere', William Morris (1834-1896) was one of the most original and inspiring socialist intellectuals of his generation. This collection, the first of his political writings to be published for nearly 50 years, reproduces essays and lectures. Morris examines the relationship between art and politics, the possibilities for a socialist society, and the crimes of empire among other subjects, and his writings demonstrate his profound commitment to 19th-century socialism. Other chapters include The Housing of the Poor, Philanthropists, Ireland and Italy: A Warning, Whigs, Democrats and Socialists, Why We Celebrate a Commune of Paris, and Correspondence on Communism and Anarchism among them. Morris was a reader of Marx and a friend of Engels and given how much the Arts and Crafts movement from which Morris emerged developed a reputation for the 'simple life', it is bracing to read Morris on what he regards as 'simplicity'. 'Well, but this demand of the extinction of asceticism bears with it another demand: for the extinction of luxury. Does that seem a paradox to you? It ought not to do so. What brings about luxury but a sickly discontent with the simple joys of the lovely earth?' 215pp, paperback.

Thomas explored why so many of the greatest thinkers were Nonconformists and the rise of the rejection of orthodox religion and the rise in literacy and role of women in spreading reading are the subjects of her book. She explores the evolution of dissenting thought and how Nonconformity shaped the transformation of England from a rural to an urban, industrialised society. The foundations for the Industrial Revolution were in place from the late Middle Ages when the early development of manufacturing processes and changes in the structure of rural communities began to provide opportunities for economic and social advancement. Successive waves of Huguenot migrants and the influence of Northern European religious ideology also played an important role in this process. The Civil Wars provided a catalyst for the dissemination of new ideas and helped shape the emergence of a new English Protestantism and divergent dissident sects. The persecution which followed strengthened the Nonconformist cause, and for the early Quakers it intensified their unity and resilience, qualities which would prove to be invaluable for business. In the years following the Restoration, Nonconformist ideas fuelled enlightened thought creating an environment for enterprise but also a desire for more radical change. Reformers seized on the plight of a working poor alienated by innovation and frustrated by false promises, the vision which was at first the spark for innovation would ignite revolution. B/w illus. 280 pages.

Widely considered to be one of his most important works, Lenin's State and Revolution was written in August and September 1917 in Finland, while hiding from Russia's Provisional Government which had put out warrants for his arrest. The charge against him was complicity in the abortive Bolshevik July coup that aimed at seizing power in Petrograd and the rest of post-Tsarist Russia. The literary style is rambling as Lenin exhorts an invisible audience, piling quotation on quotation from Marx and Engels as if the two founders of 'scientific socialism' were the ultimate authorities on every subject. The book's impulse lies in Lenin's boundless political ambition, namely his craving to acquire absolute power in Russia in order to instigate a worldwide revolution. He found support for his position in a remark made by Marx in 1871, following the episode of the Paris commune. The theory was to create a popular civic authority that in Russia's case would be the so-called 'Soviets', councils of workers, peasants and soldiers. And of course Lenin became Russia's dictator and would completely subvert the existing political system with a one-party regime that in time would pay no heed to the wishes of the population. The state would become an obedient instrument of the party, as the party would turn into an obedient instrument of itself-appointed leaders. From the years immediately preceding his death in 1924, his writings are filled with complaints about the size and procrastinations of the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus, which he was incapable of either reducing or restraining. With a new introduction by Richard Pipes, 130pp, paperback.

Two German scholars specialising in the Qur'an and the New Testament have written this ground-breaking book about Jesus. Their approach is new not just because this kind of collaboration is unprecedented, but also because the methodology adopts an evolutionary approach to the Qur'an's pronouncements about Jesus, taking as its starting point the assumption that the Qur'an was largely written during the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime. The authors are guided by the principles of comparative theology, though at the same time they seek to remain faithful to the truths to which they are committed. The paradigm shift in modern philosophy has seen metaphysics replaced by transcendental philosophy, with ultimate validity conceived not in terms of substances or natures, but in terms of relationships. The claim that Jesus is of one substance with God becomes the formulation that Jesus's creatural nature is defined in its originating in, and striving towards, the divine nature. God's word contains and expresses God's commitment to the Other within himself, and Jesus derives his personal identity from desiring God's will. The biblical record emphasized Jesus's intimate relation to the Father and also Jesus's capacity to honour the otherness of others. If there are exceptions to this, for instance the Cleansing of the Temple, it is because of Jesus's capacity to recognise others' unrealised potentialities. For Muslims, the question arises as to why we may not speak of other human beings as God's living word, and Q 9:30 admonishes Christians for giving monks and bishops godlike status. The authors contextualise this by suggesting that the verse is attacking abusive practices in both religions. There is a debate in the Qur'an about the internal threat of trinitarianism, and this challenging study concludes with a forensic search in the Qur'an for functional equivalents to Jesus's salvific work. A sensitive topic is Jesus's Crucifixion, and the Qur'an rejects any form of redemptive power. The Qur'anic title for Jesus, "servant of God", belongs in a wider context. 225pp.

When cathedrals were bright with paint... colonnettes, gables, pinnacles and statues were rich in colour. Red, blue and yellow helped the viewer to identify the holy figures and to decipher the great book of stone. The largest medieval drawing in existence, measuring more than four metres in height, provides exceptional evidence for this. Dating from c.1360-65, it represents the central part of the façade of Strasbourg Cathedral. Even now the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages overwhelm by their imagination, technical daring and sheer scale. How could such structures be built when cities had only a few thousand inhabitants, and only the most primitive machinery was available? Who initiated them? Who designed them? Who paid for them? All around the world but especially in Italy and in Gaul, each Christian community was driven by a spirit of rivalry to have a more glorious church than the others. Gothic and Romanesque building sites are shown in detail in manuscript illumination. As the Medieval town grew, buildings turned from wood to stone and grew ever higher. Patrons sought master masons, intellectuals became administrators, artists and architects established their independence and rights. Discover tracings on stone such as in the sacristy of the Roslin Chapel in Scotland where construction began in 1450, remarkable drawings from workshops, organised guilds, the octagon of Ely Cathedral 1322 and how metal became an essential material. Fully documented and splendidly illustrated throughout in colour, 176pp, paperback.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle had a huge influence on the development of Western philosophy. Born in northern Greece in 384BCE, his father was the physician to the King of Macedonia, and although much of his early life remains a mystery, we know that he went to Athens when he was 17 to study in Plato's Academy where he spent more than two decades under his tutelage. He left the peaceful environment of Assos after a request from King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his son Alexander, later better known as Alexander the Great. When this task came to an end, Aristotle returned to Athens and created his own institution of learning, the Lyceum, where he encouraged his students not only in philosophy but in astronomy, biology, mathematics, medicine, music and rhetoric, and it was there he gave regular lectures and wrote many treatises including Nicomachean Ethics and this book. Public speaking was a critical skill in Ancient Greece whether for politicians or ordinary citizens putting forward their case in courts of law. Aristotle set out to create a guide to help students argue persuasively and at the same time it is a comprehensive study of human emotions and character with rhetoric one of the three branches of philosophy along with logic and dialectic. Brilliantly explained and carefully reasoned, Aristotle created essential guidelines for argument and a prose style that would influence writers for more than two millennia. 252pp in new full price paperback.