From antiquity to today, human culture has always been obsessed with fame, infamy, and celebrity. Fame is essential to history itself, distilling what a culture remembers of the past, celebrates as significant in the present, and bequeaths as cultural memory to the future. From emperors to film stars, from literary works to religious relics, and from natural catastrophes to scientific breakthroughs, fame is defined by cultural visibility and is created, communicated, and consumed through media and representation. A Cultural History of Fame examines the concept of fame and its manifestations - in ideas, places, artefacts, and people - across the last 3000 years.

The work is divided into 6 volumes, with each volume covering the same topics, so readers can either study a period/volume or follow a topic across history. The volumes are:

1. A Cultural History of Fame in Antiquity
2. A Cultural History of Fame in the Medieval Age
3. A Culture History of Fame in the Renaissance
4. A Cultural History of Fame in the Age of Enlightenment
5. A Cultural History of Fame in the Age of Revolution
6. A Cultural History of Fame in the Modern Age

Themes (and chapter titles) are: the communication of fame; the arts, philosophy and attention; politics, leadership and power; religion, spirituality, and immortality; the visibility of events, places and things; infamy and scandal; innovation, science and its public expression; the construction and presentation of heroes.

The page extent for the pack is approximately 1536pp. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors and an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index.

Special introductory offer (valid up to 3 months after publication): £395 / $550 (full price: £440 / $610)

The Cultural Histories Series
A Cultural History of Fame is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).

Mary Kathryn Barbier is Professor of History at Mississippi State University, USA. She is the author of several books, including Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals (2017), D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion (2009) and Kursk 1943: The Greatest Tank Battle Ever Fought (2002). She is also the co-editor of America and the Vietnam War (2010; with Andrew Wiest and Glenn Robins), Culture, Power, and Security: New Directions in the History of National and International Security (2012; with Richard V. Damms) and the War in History journal.

Dennis Showalter was Professor Emeritus of History at Colorado College, USA. He is the author of several books, including Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk, The Turning Point of World War II (2013), Patton and Rommel: Men Of War in the Twentieth Century (2005) and Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914 (1991), which won the American Historical Association's Paul M. Birdsall Prize. He was the Founding Editor of the War in History journal and Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online: Military History. Professor Showalter was also President of the Society for Military History between 1997 and 2000.