Past & the Present

First Published in 1987. Presented as two sections, the first includes three surveys which aim to describe and comment on some of radial changes in the questions historians have been asking about the past and some of the new data, tools and methodology they have developed to answer them. The second is a collection of essays that were originally reflective book reviews and are concerned with the theme of how and why did Western Europe change itself during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries so as to lay the social, economic, scientific, political, ideological and ethical foundations for the rationalist, democratic, individualistic, technological industrialized society in which we now live.

Since 1963 Lawrence Stone has been Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. He was Chairman of the Department of History from 1967 to 1970, and in 1968 was appointed Director of the newly-established Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. Professor Stone is a member of the Editorial Board of Past and Present, and the author of numerous books, including The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford University Press), Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Penguin) and The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642 (Routledge & Kegan Paul; Ark paperbacks).