This anthology of 55 keyboard works provides an instructive picture of the music of the young J. S. Bach within the context of a spectrum of works by his elder contemporaries.

The Andreas Bach Book and the so-called Möller Manuscript, the most important sources for the young Bach’s keyboard music, were compiled in the early eighteenth century by Bach’s eldest brother and only keyboard teacher, Johann Christoph Bach of Ohrdruf, himself a pupil of Johann Pachelbel. The significance of the two manuscripts lies not only in their close connection to J. S. Bach (as evidenced by Bach autographs in both books), but equally in the fact that they contain some of the most outstanding keyboard music by Bach’s North German colleagues: Georg Böhm, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Johann Adam Reincken. While some of these compositions have been published in modern editions, others have been entirely overlooked.

This anthology presents keyboard works by the young J. S. Bach which are either little known or are earlier versions of better known works (for example, the Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582). Also included are all the unpublished keyboard works in the two manuscripts, as well as works by lesser known composers for which modern editions are not easily accessible. Rounding out the picture are works by well-known contemporaries for which the transmission in the young Bach’s circle proves particularly significant.

Intended for both player and scholar, this edition offers the texts of the two manuscripts in an easy to read layout that emphasizes the clarity of the counterpoint. Of particular interest to organists is the presentation of the organ works in the appropriate notion of the time, on two staves with the pedal voice integrated in the bass staff.

The history of the Middle Eastern family presents as many questions as there are currently answers. Who lived together in the household? Who married whom and for how long? Who got a piece of the patrimonial pie? These are the questions that Margaret Meriwether investigates in this groundbreaking study of family life among the upper classes of the Ottoman Empire in the pre-modern and early modern period.

Meriwether recreates Aleppo family life over time from records kept by the Islamic religious courts that held jurisdiction over all matters of family law and property transactions. From this research, she asserts that the stereotype of the large, patriarchal patrilineal family rarely existed in reality. Instead, Aleppo's notables organized their families in a great diversity of ways, despite the fact that they were all members of the same social class with widely shared cultural values, acting under the same system of family law. She concludes that this had important implications for gender relations and demonstrates that it gave women more authority and greater autonomy than is usually acknowledged.

How the imposition of Crown rule across the British Empire during the Age of Revolution corroded the rights of British subjects and laid the foundations of the modern police state.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Empire responded to numerous crises in its colonies, from North America to Jamaica, Bengal to New South Wales. This was the Age of Revolution, and the Crown, through colonial governors, tested an array of coercive peacekeeping methods in a desperate effort to maintain control. In the process these leaders transformed what it meant to be a British subject.

In the decades after the American Revolution, colonial legal regimes were transformed as the king’s representatives ruled new colonies with an increasingly heavy hand. These new autocratic regimes blurred the lines between the rule of law and the rule of the sword. Safeguards of liberty and justice, developed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, were eroded while exacting obedience and imposing order became the focus of colonial governance. In the process, many constitutional principles of empire were subordinated to a single, overarching rule: where necessary, colonial law could diverge from metropolitan law. Within decades of the American Revolution, Lisa Ford shows, the rights claimed by American rebels became unthinkable in the British Empire. Some colonial subjects fought back but, in the empire, the real winner of the American Revolution was the king.

In tracing the dramatic growth of colonial executive power and the increasing deployment of arbitrary policing and military violence to maintain order, The King’s Peace provides important lessons on the relationship between peacekeeping, sovereignty, and political subjectivity—lessons that illuminate contemporary debates over the imbalance between liberty and security.