Western Civ

The Thirty Years War comes to an end, leaving Germany devastated and divided.

Western Civ 2.0

The Holy Roman Empire wilts under the combined pressure of Sweden and France. Spain exits our stage. And Central Europe lurches toward peace.

Western Civ 2.0

Shifting alliances continue to hamper peace efforts in the Thirty Years War.

Western Civ 2.0

The Thirty Years War continues to drag on in Germany after the death of Ferdinand II and the ascension of Ferdinand III. 

Western Civ 2.0

The years after the death of the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus saw the ever-shifting alliances of the Thirty Years War do maximum damage. 

Western Civ 2.0

King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden briefly, but decisively, intervenes in the Thirty Years War.

Christian IV of Denmark intervenes in the Thirty Years War. 

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Western Civ 2.0

The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as well over a hundred thousand people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they proved no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two months. 
 
In Summer of Fire and Blood, the first history of the German Peasants’ War in a generation, historian Lyndal Roper exposes the far-reaching ramifications of this rebellion. Though the war’s victors portrayed the uprising as naive and inchoate, Roper reveals a mass movement that sought to make good on the radical potential of the Protestant Reformation. By recovering what the people themselves felt and believed, Summer of Fire and Blood reconstructs the thrilling, tragic story of the peasants’ fight to change the world. 

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Cardinal Richelieu comes to power in France, altering the course of French history.

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Western Civ 2.0 

For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land Power, political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment. 
 
Modern history has been defined by land reallocation on a massive scale. From the 1500s on, European colonial powers and new nation-states shifted indigenous lands into the hands of settlers. The 1900s brought new waves of land appropriation, from Soviet and Maoist collectivization to initiatives turning large estates over to family farmers. The shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land. Drawing on a career’s worth of original research and on-the-ground fieldwork, Albertus shows that choices about who owns the land have locked in poverty, sexism, racism, and climate crisis—and that what we do with the land today can change our collective fate. 
 
Global in scope, Land Power argues that saving civilization must begin with the earth under our feet.

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