Michael MacDonald – författare

Sleepless Souls is a social and cultural history of suicide in early modern England. Self-murder was regarded as a heinous crime in Tudor and Stuart England, and was subject to savage punishments. Those who committed suicide had their property forfeited to the crown, and their bodies were denied Christian burial and desecrated. In Georgian England suicide was in practice de-criminalized, tolerated and even sentimentalized.Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy, using a wide variety of contemporary sources, especially local records, trace the causes of this dramatic change in attitude. They analyse suicide within its contemporary context, relating shifts in opinion and practice to the complex framework of life in early modern England. Political events, religious changes, philosophical fashions, conflicts between centre and localities, and differing class interests all played their part. The authors' focus on the trauma of death by suicide uncovers the forces that were reshaping the mental outlook of different English classes and social groups. Their detailed and scholarly exploration of the `crime' of self-murder thus provides a history of social and cultural change in English society over three centuries.

Witchcraft was at its height in Elizabethan London. Edward Jorden showed that hysteria and not demons lay behind the witch-craze.Edward Jorden's Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (1603) is said to have reclaimed the demoniacally possessed for medicine and to have introduced the concept of hysteria into English psychiatry. The aim of this book is to reassess the reasons why Jorden wrote his famous pamphlet and to set it in its actual historical context.This book brings Jorden's pamphlet together with two works by Jorden's adversaries, John Swann's A True and Breife Report of Mary Glovers Vexation and Stephen Bradwell's `Mary Glovers late Woeful Case', which has never before been published. Both of these concern the incident that provoked Jorden's Briefe Discourse, and they show that his pamphlet was in fact prompted by a bitter religious and political controversy over the case.Michael MacDonald, in his introduction provides a fresh and realistic analysis of the politics of credulity and scepticism in early modern England and Jorden's part in them.

This book, first published in 1637, was the first full-length treatise on suicide published in English. Originally published in 1988 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, the introduction by Michael MacDonald places the book in the context of attitudes to suicide in its day, as well as showing some of the ways that this theological book is also a study of the psychology and sociology of suicide. He discusses the evolution of the law of suicide and analyses the religious beliefs held about it at the time, before going on to look at John Sym himself and the structure of his book.

This book, first published in 1637, was the first full-length treatise on suicide published in English. Originally published in 1988 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, the introduction by Michael MacDonald places the book in the context of attitudes to suicide in its day, as well as showing some of the ways that this theological book is also a study of the psychology and sociology of suicide. It also discusses the evolution of the law of suicide and analyses the religious beliefs held about it at the time, before going on to look John Sym himself and the structure of his book.

Witchcraft was at its height in Elizabethan London. Edward Jorden showed that hysteria and not demons lay behind the witch-craze.Edward Jorden's Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (1603) is said to have reclaimed the demoniacally possessed for medicine and to have introduced the concept of hysteria into English psychiatry. The aim of this book is to reassess the reasons why Jorden wrote his famous pamphlet and to set it in its actual historical context.This book brings Jorden's pamphlet together with two works by Jorden's adversaries, John Swann's A True and Breife Report of Mary Glovers Vexation and Stephen Bradwell's `Mary Glovers late Woeful Case', which has never before been published. Both of these concern the incident that provoked Jorden's Briefe Discourse, and they show that his pamphlet was in fact prompted by a bitter religious and political controversy over the case.Michael MacDonald, in his introduction provides a fresh and realistic analysis of the politics of credulity and scepticism in early modern England and Jorden's part in them.

Mystical Bedlam explores the social history of insanity of early seventeenth-century England by means of a detailed analysis of the records of Richard Napier, a clergyman and astrological physician, who treated over 2000 mentally disturbed patients between 1597 and 1634. Napier's clients were drawn from every social rank and his therapeutic techniques included all the types of psychological healing practised at the time. His vivid descriptions of his clients' afflictions and complaints illuminate the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people. This book goes beyond simply analysing mental disorder in a seventeenth-century astrological and medical practice. It reveals contemporary attitudes towards family life, describes the appeal of witchcraft and demonology to ordinary villagers, and explains the social and intellectual basis for the eclectic blend of scientific, magical, and religious therapies practised before the English Revolution. Not only is it a contribution to the history of medicine but also a survey of some of the darkest regions of the mental world of the English people of the seventeenth century.

This book tells the story of how the transition to democracy in South Africa enfranchised blacks politically but without raising most of them from poverty. It shows in detail how the continuing strength of the white establishment forces the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) to compromise plans for full political and economic transformation. Deferring the economic transformation, the new dispensation nurtures a small black elite. The new elite absorbs the economic interests of the established white elites while continuing to share racial identities with the majority of their countrymen, muffling the divisions between rich whites and poor blacks, thus ensuring political stability in the new South Africa.Although democratic South Africa is officially "non-racial," the book shows that racial solidarities continue to play a role in the country's political economy. Ironically, racial identities, which ultimately proved the undoing of apartheid, have come to the rescue of contemporary democratic capitalism. The author explains how and why racial solidarities are being revamped, focusing particularly on the role of black economic empowerment, the black bourgeoisie, and how calls to represent the identities of black South Africans are having the effect of substituting the racial interests of black elites for the economic interests of the black poor.

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a fair number of Americans thought the idea was crazy. Now everyone, except a few die-hards, thinks it was. So what was going through the minds of the talented and experienced men and women who planned and initiated the war? What were their assumptions? Overreach aims to recover those presuppositions.Michael MacDonald examines the standard hypotheses for the decision to attack, showing them to be either wrong or of secondary importance: the personality of President George W. Bush, including his relationship with his father; Republican electoral considerations; the oil lobby; the Israeli lobby. He also undermines the argument that the war failed because of the Bush administration’s incompetence.The more fundamental reasons for the Iraq War and its failure, MacDonald argues, are located in basic axioms of American foreign policy, which equate America’s ideals with its interests (distorting both in the process) and project those ideals as universally applicable. Believing that democratic principles would bring order to Iraq naturally and spontaneously, regardless of the region’s history and culture or what Iraqis themselves wanted, neoconservative thinkers, with support from many on the left, advocated breaking the back of state power under Saddam Hussein. They maintained that by bringing about radical regime change, the United States was promoting liberalism, capitalism, and democracy in Iraq. But what it did instead was unleash chaos.

This book explores the complex ways in which England's gradual transformation from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant nation presented men and women with new ways in which to fashion their own identities and to define their relationships with society.The past generation's research into the religious history of early modern England has heightened our appreciation for the persistence of traditional beliefs in the face of concerted attacks by followers of Henry VIII and his successor Edward VI. The book argues that the present challenge for historians is to move beyond this revisionist characterization of the English Reformation as a largely unpopular and unsuccessful exercise of state power to assess its legacy of increasing religious diversification. The contributors cast a post-revisionist light on religious change by showing how the Henrician break with Rome and the Edwardian implementation of a Protestant agenda had a lasting influence on the laity's beliefs and practices, forging a legacy that Mary I's efforts to restore Catholicism could not overturn.If, as revisionist research has stressed, late medieval Christianity provided the laity with a wide array of means with which to internalize and individualize their religious experiences, then surely the events of the reigns of Henry and Edward vastly expanded the field over which the religiosity of English men and women could range. This book addresses the unfolding consequences of this theological variegation to assess how individual spiritual beliefs, aspirations, and practices helped shape social and political action on a family, local, and national level.

Julius Euting (1839–1913), a pioneering German scholar, made significant contributions to Punic, Hebrew, and Aramaic studies. After moving to Strasbourg in 1872, Euting embarked on a perilous 1883 expedition to northern Arabia with Charles Huber, aiming to collect ancient texts and investigate archaeological sites. Despite a strained relationship, Euting’s detailed notebooks, rich with observations, anecdotes, and original watercolours, provide a crucial record of Aramaic and Nabataean inscriptions. This book presents Euting’s work in English for the first time, featuring his artwork and William Facey's introduction, which re-evaluates Euting’s role in the discovery of the Tayma Stele and contextualises his journey in 19th-century Arabian exploration.