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1996 And The End of History
By David Stubbs. 2016
1996 And The End of History examines the year as it panned out in the UK not just in politics…
but in music, light entertainment and sport. It was the zenith of a decade which will go down as remarkably untroubled bymodern standards; following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, prior to 9/11, in which political conditions of peace and apparent economic prosperity created an overall mood of frivolity, postmodern anti-seriousness and a desire to get back to sunnier times before the grim onset of the strife-ridden 70's and 80's.Held at a Distance: My Rediscovery of Ethiopia
By Rebecca G. Haile. 2007
This powerful book gives readers a chance to experience Ethiopia through the personal experience of a writer who is both…
Ethiopian and American. It takes readers beyond headlines and stereotypes to a deeper understanding of the country. This is an absorbing account of the author's return trip to Ethiopia as an adult, having left the country in exile with her family at age 11. She profiles relatives and friends who have remained in Ethiopia, and she writes movingly about Ethiopia's recent past and its ancient history. She offers a clear-eyed analysis of the state of the country today, and her keen observations and personal experience will resonate with readers. This is a unique glimpse into a fascinating African country by a talented writer.Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Women And Men In History)
By Sandra Cavallo, Lyndan Warner. 1999
This new collection of essays brings together brand new research on widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe. The volume…
opens with an introductory chapter by the Editors which looks generally at the conditions and constructions of widowhood in this period. This is followed by a range of essays which illuminate different dimensions of widowhood across Europe - in England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. A particular attraction of the volume is the attention given to widowers, and the comparisons made between the male and female experience of widowhood. It is an exciting reinterpretation of the subject which will do much to undo the traditional stereotype of the widow.Contributing to the volume are: Jodi Bilinkoff, Giulia Calvi, Sandra Cavallo, Isabelle Chabot, Julia Crick, Amy Erikson, Dagmar Freist, Elizabeth Foyster, Margaret Pelling, Pamela Sharpe,Tim Stretton, Barbara Todd, and Lyndan Warner.Restoration London: Everyday Life In The 1660s
By Liza Picard. 1998
'A joy of a book ... It radiates throughout that quality so essential in a good historian: infinite curiosity' ObserverHow…
did you clean your teeth in the 1660s? What make-up did you wear? What pets did you keep?Making use of every possible contemporary source, Liza Picard presents an engrossing picture of how life in London was really lived in an age of Samuel Pepys, the libertine court of Charles II and the Great Fire of London. The topics covered include houses and streets, gardens and parks, cooking, clothes and jewellery, cosmetics, hairdressing, housework, laundry and shopping, medicine and dentistry, sex education, hobbies, etiquette, law and crime, religion and popular belief. The London of 350 years ago is brought (and sometimes horrifyingly) to life.A Brief Guide to Jane Austen: The Life And Times Of The World's Favourite Author
By Charles Jennings. 2012
Jane Austen is a mystery. The first incontrovertibly great woman novelist, she is, among other things, one of the finest…
prose stylists in literature; the first truly modern writer, the Godmother of chick lit. She is also the greatest enigma (next to Shakespeare) in English literature. Soldiers in the First World War sat in the trenches and read them for the civilising comforts they provided. Hard-nut literary critics such as F. R. Leavis lauded their austere complexity. World Book Day, 2007, found that Pride and Prejudice was the one book 'The nation can't live without'.In this witty, accessible guide, Charles Jennings goes in search of this enigma through her words as well as her times, including a short biography, an overview of the novels, as well as the world that she inhabited. Finally, the book contains Jane's very own words of advice for the modern life.Hostile Skies: The Battle For The Falklands
By David Morgan. 2007
The gripping personal story of a Falklands Fighter Ace.David Morgan, RAF officer and poet, relives his experiences during the Falklands…
War in this vivid memoir. On secondment to the Royal Navy when the Argentine invasion of the Falklands began and personally credited with shooting down two Argentine Skyhawks as well as enemy helicopters, Morgan was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.Here he recounts his involvement in the first British air-strike against Argentine positions around Port Stanley and describes being first on the scene when enemy jets bombed the landing ships SIR TRISTRAM and SIR GALAHAD. Including the author's heartfelt letters sent back to England to close family and friends, HOSTILE SKIES dramatically recalls what it was really like to fight, live and love during the Falklands War.Rorke's Drift (Sven Hassel War Classics)
By Adrian Greaves. 2002
The story of the bravest battle ever fought.On 22nd January 1879 a force of 20,000 Zulus overwhelmed and destroyed the…
British invading force at Isandlwana, killing and ritually disemboweling over 1200 troops. That afternoon, the same Zulu force turned their attention on a small outpost at Rorke's Drift.The battle that ensued, one of the British Army's great epics, has since entered into legend. Throughout the night 85 men held off six full-scale Zulu attacks at the cost of only 27 casualties, forcing the Zulu army to withdraw. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded for bravery shown on that night, the largest number for any one engagement in history.But as Adrian Greaves's new research shows there are several things about the myth of Rorke's Drift that don't add up. While it was the scene of undoubted bravery, it was also the scene of some astonishing cases of cowardice, and there is increasing evidence to suggest that the legend of Rorke's Drift was created to divert attention from the appalling British mistakes which caused the earlier defeat at Isandlwana.The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion 1500-1715
By Geoffrey V. Scammell. 1714
The Codex Borgia: A Full-Color Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript
By Gisele D az, Alan Rodgers. 1993
Considered by many scholars the finest extant Mexican codex and one of the most important original sources for the study…
of pre-Columbian religion, the Codex Borgia is a work of profound beauty, filled with strange and evocative images related to calendrical, cosmological, ritual, and divinatory matters. Generally similar to such Mixtec manuscripts as the Codex Nuttall, the Codex Borgia is thought to have its origin (ca. A.D. 1400) in the southern central highlands of Mexico, perhaps in Puebla or Oaxaca. It is most probably a religious document that once belonged to a temple or sacred shrine.One use of the Codex many have been to divine the future, for it includes ritual 260 day calendars, material on aspects of the planet Venus, and a sort of numerological prognostic of the lives of wedded couples. Another section concerns various regions of the world and the supernatural characters and attributes of those regions. Also described are the characteristics of a number of deities, while still other passages relate to installation ceremonies of rulers in pre-Columbian kingdoms.Until the publication of this Dover edition, the Codex Borgia has been largely inaccessible to the general public. The priceless original is in the Vatican Library and previous photographic facsimiles are very rare or very expensive or both. Moreover, the original Codex has been damaged over the centuries, resulting in the obscuration and loss of many images. In order to recapture the beauty and grandeur of the original, Gisele Diaz and Alan Rodgers have painstakingly restored the Codex by hand-- a seven-year project -- employing the most scrupulous research and restoration techniques. The result is 76 large full-color plates of vibrant, striking depictions of gods, kings, warriors, mythical creatures, and mysterious abstract designs -- a vivid panorama that offers profound insights into pre-Columbian Mexican myth and ritual. Now students, anthropologists, lovers of fine art and rare books -- anyone interested in the art and culture of ancient Mexico -- can study the Codex Borgia in this inexpensive, accurate, well-made edition. An informative introduction by noted anthropologist Bruce E. Byland places the Codex in its historical context and helps elucidate its meaning and significance.Elizabeth's London: Everyday Life In Elizabethan London
By Liza Picard. 2003
The everyday realities and practical details of daily life in Elizabethan London, which most history books ignore - a Sunday…
Times bestseller.Like its acclaimed predecessors, RESTORATION LONDON and DR JOHNSON'S LONDON, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of everyday life - and the conditions in which most people lived - so often ignored in conventional history books. The book begins with the River Thames, which - from its surly water-men to its great occasions - played such a central part in the city's life. It moves on to the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework and shopping; clothes, jewellery and make-up; health and medicine; sex and food; education, etiquette and hobbies; religion, law and crime.Dr Johnson's London: Everyday Life In London In The Mid 18th Century
By Liza Picard. 2000
'A Baedeker of the past, absorbing and revealing in equal measure' Peter Ackroyd'Brings the age's tortuous splendours and profound murkiness…
vividly to life' ObserverWhen Dr Johnson published his great Dictionary in 1755, London was the biggest city in Europe. The opulence of the rich and the comfort of the 'middling' sort contrasted sharply with the back-breaking labour and pitiful wages of the poor. Executions were rated one of the best amusements, but there was bullock-hunting and cock-fighting too. Crime, from pickpockets to highwaymen, was rife, prisons were poisonous and law-enforcement rudimentary.Dr Johnson's London is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of the everyday life of our ancestors: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry and shopping; clothes and cosmetics; medicine, sex, hobbies, education and etiquette. The book spans the years 1740 to 1770, starting when the gin craze was gaining ground and ending when the east coast of America was still British. While brilliantly recording the strangeness and individuality of the past, Dr Johnson's London continually reminds us of parallels with the present day.Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil
By Barbara Newman, Tom Diaz. 2006
Before September 11, 2001, one terrorist group had killed more Americans than any other: Hezbollah, the "Party of God." Today…
it remains potentially more dangerous than even al Qaeda. Yet little has been known about its inner workings, past successes, and future plans--until now. Written by an accomplished journalist and a law-enforcement expert, Lightning Out of Lebanon is a chilling and essential addition to our understanding of the external and internal threats to America. In disturbing detail, it portrays the degree to which Hezbollah has infiltrated this country and the extent to which it intends to do us harm. Formed in Lebanon by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in 1982, Hezbollah is fueled by hatred of Israel and the United States. Its 1983 truck-bomb attack against the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 soldiers--the largest peacetime loss ever for the U.S. military--and caused President Reagan to withdraw all troops from Lebanon. Since then, among other atrocities, Hezbollah has murdered Americans at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon and the Khobar Towers U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia; tortured and killed the CIA station chief in Beirut; held organizational meetings with top members of al Qaeda-including Osama bin Laden-and established sleeper cells in the United States and Canada. Lightning Out of Lebanon reveals how, starting in 1982, a cunning and deadly Hezbollah terrorist named Mohammed Youssef Hammoud operated a cell in Charlotte, North Carolina, under the radar of American intelligence. The story of how FBI special agent Rick Schwein captured him in 2002 is a brilliantly researched and written account. Yet the past is only prologue in the unsettling odyssey of Hezbollah. Using their exclusive sources in the Middle East and inside the U.S. counterterrorism establishment, the authors of Lightning Out of Lebanon imagine the deadly future of Hezbollah and posit how best to combat the group which top American counterintelligence officials and Senator Bob Graham, vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have called "the A Team of terrorism."The Life of Greece: The Story of Civilization, Volume II
By Will Durant. 1939
The second volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, The Life of Greece: The Story of Civilization, Volume 2 chronicles…
the history of ancient Greek civilization. Here Durant tells the whole story of Greece, from the days of Crete's vast Aegean empire to the final extirpation of the last remnants of Greek liberty, crushed under the heel of an implacably forward-marching Rome. The dry minutiae of battles and sieges, of tortuous statecraft of tyrant and king, get the minor emphasis in what is preeminently a vivid recreation of Greek culture, brought to the reader through the medium of supple, vigorous prose. In this masterful work, readers will learn about: * the siege of Troy * the great city-states of Athens and Sparta * the heroes of Homer's epics * the gods and lesser deities of Mount Olympus * the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle * the death of Alexander the GreatPictures in the Air: The Story of the National Theatre of the Deaf
By Stephen C. Baldwin. 1993
The Mammoth Book of Pirates
By Jon E. Lewis. 2006
A rollicking tour of the history of the high seas with Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, 'Calico Jack' Rackham, Anne Bonney and…
other figures of maritime legend. Includes Francis 'The Scourge of Spain' Drake's audacious night-time treasure raid on Nombre de Dios; Alexander Exquemelin's fly-on-the-wall account of the 'wicked order of pirates, or robbers of the sea'; the journal of William Dampier, found stashed in a hollow bamboo tube, and much more. Witness skulduggery and malice, terror and excitement -- a colourful and always entertaining collection.Symbols, Signs and Signets
By Ernst Lehner. 1950
Reproducing in historical sequence 1355 signs, seals, and symbols from the simplest drawings of heavenly bodies, through the intricate heraldic…
devices of the Middle Ages, to modern cattle brands and hobo sign language, this book will be of immense value to the commercial artist and designer. The development of man as an artist and designer is here recorded pictorially by one of the world's foremost experts in the field of graphic art, Ernst Lehner.This book is divided into 13 sections, each with a separate brief introduction: Symbolic Gods and Deities (Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Germanic, Incan, Aztec, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, etc.); Astronomy and Astrology; Alchemy, Magic, and Mystic (Nordic runes, magic circles, etc.); Church and Religion; Heraldry (coats of arms, badges, etc.); Monsters and Imaginary Figures; Japanese Crests; Marks and Signets (engravers, goldsmiths, armorers, stonemasons, etc.); Watermarks (fourteenth-eighteenth centuries); Printer's Marks (fifteenth-seventeenth centuries); Cattle Brands; and Hobo Signs. All the signs, symbols, and signets are pictured in black and white on strikingly laid out pages, with full explanatory notes for both lay readers and specialists.Anyone interested in means of communication other than language will find this book fascinating and authoritative. The student and teacher in the graphic arts will find it a practical visual guide through the transformation of simple marks and signs into the complicated emblems of our time.The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History
By Laurent Dubois, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Joseph C. Miller, Vincent Brown. 2015
Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the connections among Africa, the Americas, and Europe transformed world history--through maritime exploration, commercial…
engagements, human migrations and settlements, political realignments and upheavals, cultural exchanges, and more. This book, the first encyclopedic reference work on Atlantic history, takes an integrated, multicontinental approach that emphasizes the dynamics of change and the perspectives and motivations of the peoples who made it happen. The entries--all specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of leading scholars--synthesize the latest scholarship on central themes, including economics, migration, politics, war, technologies and science, the physical environment, and culture.Part one features five major essays that trace the changes distinctive to each chronological phase of Atlantic history. Part two includes more than 125 entries on key topics, from the seemingly familiar viewed in unfamiliar and provocative ways (the Seven Years' War, trading companies) to less conventional subjects (family networks, canon law, utopias).This is an indispensable resource for students, researchers, and scholars in a range of fields, from early American, African, Latin American, and European history to the histories of economics, religion, and science.The first encyclopedic reference on Atlantic historyFeatures five major essays and more than 125 alphabetical entriesProvides essential context on major areas of change:Economies (for example, the slave trade, marine resources, commodities, specie, trading companies)Populations (emigrations, Native American removals, blended communities)Politics and law (the law of nations, royal liberties, paramount chiefdoms, independence struggles in Haiti, the Hispanic Americas, the United States, and France)Military actions (the African and Napoleonic wars, the Seven Years' War, wars of conquest)Technologies and science (cartography, nautical science, geography, healing practices)The physical environment (climate and weather, forest resources, agricultural production, food and diets, disease)Cultures and communities (captivity narratives, religions and religious practices)Includes original contributions from Sven Beckert, Holly Brewer, Peter A. Coclanis, Seymour Drescher, Eliga H. Gould, David S. Jones, Wim Klooster, Mark Peterson, Steven Pincus, Richard Price and Sophia Rosenfeld, and many moreContains illustrations, maps, and bibliographiesVictoria Cross Heroes
By Michael Ashcroft. 2016
This ebook edition contains the full text version as per the book. Doesn't include original photographic and illustrated material. VICTORIA…
CROSS HEROES tells the stories of over 150 individuals whose bravery has earned them the Victoria Cross, Britain's most prestigious medal for courage in action. The book is introduced by Michael Ashcroft, who owns over ten per cent of all VCs ever awarded. He explains the history of the medal and the story of his fascination with it. The main text of the book tells the stories of both those recipients whose medals are in his collection and those whose stories featured in the television series. Each chapter covers a different conflict, from the Crimean War to Iraq.George Cross Heroes
By Michael Ashcroft. 2011
This ebook edition contains the full text version as per the book; but doesn't include original photographic and illustrated material.…
In a broadcast to the nation in September 1940 King George VI announced the institution of the George Cross - a civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross awarded to recognize the many acts of supreme gallantry being performed outside of the battlefield. From Thomas Alderson, the first recipient of the medal, who heroically rescued several people from trapped houses during one terrible Blitz night, to Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher, who threw himself onto a live grenade in the Helmand province to save the lives of his comrades (and somehow survived), to Barbara Harrison, an air stewardess who died in 1968 after helping many passengers escape from an onboard fire, this book tells the amazing stories of everyone of the George Cross's 159 direct recipients. GEORGE CROSS HEROES pays tribute to the extraordinary courage displayed by so many of the commonwealth's men and women in so many incredible situations over the last 70 years.Our Glasgow: Memories of Life in Disappearing Britain
By Piers Dudgeon. 2009
This ebook edition contains the full text version as per the book. Doesn't include original photographic and illustrated material. This…
oral history of Glasgow spans most of the last century - a time of economic downturn and eventual renewal, in which the many communities making up the city experienced upheavals that tore some apart and brought others closer together. It tells of the beating heart of no mean city in the words of the people who made it what it is. Piers Dudgeon has listened to dozens of people who remember the city as it was, and who have lived through its many changes. They talk of childhood and education, of work and entertainment, of family, community values, health, politics, religion and music. Their stories will make you laugh and cry. It is people's own memories that make history real and this engrossing book captures them vividly.