Books like Gender in History (New Perspectives on the Past) by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

Jared Diamond analyses why great civilizations collapse, linking environmental misuse, climate change, population pressures, and trade instability as common causes, and offering lessons from societies that survived.

Sexual Politics examines how patriarchal bias shapes culture and literature, exploring gender roles, power structures, and social ethics in modern contexts.

An analysis of gender relations during late colonial Mexico (c. 1760‑1821) that links power, politics, and everyday conflicts among peasants, Indians, and other marginalized groups.

Beyond Power explores how power shapes gender relations, drawing on anthropology, history, political science, law and theology to uncover the roots and consequences of patriarchy.

An in‑depth exploration of how cities shape and are shaped by people, covering urban planning, architecture, social history, and human ecology across global towns for readers.

An expanded survey of women’s lives in early‑modern Europe, covering sexuality, masculinity, colonial impact, consumption, the life‑cycle, literacy, economics, art, piety, and witchcraft, framed by mind, body, and spirit.

"In describing and explaining the sexes, medicine and science participated in the delineation of what was "feminine" and what was "masculine" in the Middle Ages. Hildegard of Bingen and Albertus Magnus, among others, writing about gynecology, the human constitution, fetal development, or the naturalistic dimensions of divine Creation, became increasingly interested in issues surrounding reproduction and sexuality. Did women as well as men produce procreative seed? How did the physiology of the sexes influence their healthy states and their susceptibility to disease? Who derived more pleasure from sexual intercourse, men or women?" "The answers to such questions created a network of flexible concepts which did not endorse a single model of male-female relations, but did affect views on the health consequences of sexual abstinence for women and men and on the allocation of responsibility for infertility - problems with much social and religious significance in the Middle Ages. Sometimes at odds with, and sometimes in accord with other forces in medieval society, medicine and natural philosophy helped to construct a set of notions that divided significant portions of the world - from the behavior of animals to the operations of astrological signs - into "masculine" and "feminine." Even cases that seemed to exist outside the definitions of this duality, for example, hermaphrodite features or homosexual behavior, were brought under control by the application of gendered labels, such as "masculine women.""--Jacket.

Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe explores how evolving gender roles influenced the political, economic, and social transformations of Europe from the late 18th century onward, blending history, sociology, and sexuality studies.

Examining the turn‑of‑the‑century shift in American masculinity, this book traces how evolving ideals linked primitive virility with white superiority.