This introductory volume will be difficult to surpass Times Literary Supplement This book throws a lifeline to anyone trying to navigate the present high tide of multidisciplinary material on the emotions … both scholarly and enjoyable. Jane O’Grady, Times Higher Education, ‘What Are You Reading?’ Plamper clears the way for others to approach the history of emotions by mapping the multidisciplinary intellectual architecture that has supplied us with a nature/culture dualism in contemporary understandings of what emotions are and where they come from … Plamper is at his best, cutting a swathe through disciplines where other historians might fear to tread. Rob Boddice, Reviews in History excellent and thought-provoking … This is an indispensible text for anyone interested in this fast developing new subdiscipline of cultural history, and provides a refreshing perspective on emotions which are the everyday focus of so much work in mental health. As clinicians we are often less aware of the sociocultural aspects of this work than we might be, and perhaps also take the assertions of our neuroscience colleagues on faith rather too readily. That a historian can provide such an informed and thought-provoking account of contemporary approaches to emotions is salutary. Stirling Moorey, Journal of Mental Health dazzling … [Plamper] is a natural storyteller, and has a beautifully smooth writing style (thanks must also go to his translator) that makes the book accessible to readers at all levels … his book will prompt intellectual exchanges for years to come. Joanna Bourke, Social History the book as a whole provides an admirable introduction to the virtues of thinking historically about emotions – not just thinking about emotions in history … the book serves as a splendid guide to further reading. Professor William M. Reddy, The History of Emotions Blog Plamper offers a road map for bridging the gap between and potentially reconciling social constructivists and essentialists working on human emotions … Essential. T. L. Loos, CHOICE

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Jan Plamper is Professor of History at Goldsmiths, University of London. He obtained a BA from Brandeis University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, after which he taught at the University of Tübingen and from 2008 to 2012 was a Dilthey Fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, in Berlin. He is co-editor, with Benjamin Lazier, of Fear: Across the Disciplines (2012); and co-editor, with Marc Elie and Schamma Schahadat, of Rossiiskaia imperiia chuvstv: Podkhody k kul’turnoi istorii emotsii [In the Realm of Russian Feelings: Approaches to the Cultural History of Emotions] (2010). He has also recently authored The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (2012).

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